Reading John Gray’s book about communication between the sexes, ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’, I learnt the valuable lesson that one of my problems as a man is that I try to find solutions. John Gray points out that women tend to want to share problems, to discuss them, to enter into them together. Men tend to want to solve problems, not to talk about them. “Mr. Fixits” is what John Gray calls us. So, a wife will often want to share her day by talking it through with her husband, while the husband (if he is like me) will keep interrupting her with unsolicited and unwelcome solutions to her problems.
Well, I have a hunch that this book of Job is not a great book for the ‘Mr. Fixits’. I’ve even changed our title tonight from ‘A Question to answer’ to ‘Questions we can’t answer’! It is an intriguing book, but it raises more questions than it answers and I think we will find it quite demanding to study together for the next three weeks.
It is a brilliant piece of literature, and it comes where it does in our Bibles because it is a book of poetry. So it is placed first of the section of the Old Testament known in the Hebrew Bible as ‘The Writings’, which consists of the poetic books – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs – before the Prophets (from Isaiah to Malachi) and after the history books (from Genesis to Esther).
Nothing in the doctrine of the divine inspiration of scripture requires that Job should have been written by one person at one particular date, but all attempts to probe behind the book as we now have it in our Bibles are speculative and there is no agreement among the scholars. Indeed, the setting and dating of the story appear to be deliberately vague. (We do not know, for example, where that land of Uz in verse 1 was.)
The structure of the book on the other hand is quite simple: two chapters of prose, followed by thirty-nine chapters of poetry, followed by one final chapter of mainly prose. And the outline follows that structure: in chapters 1 and 2 (prose) we have an introduction, setting the scene on two levels – on earth and in heaven. Then we have poetic debate between Job and his three friends (known traditionally as Job’s comforters), a younger man (Elihu), and then God. And the story ends with Job’s vindication by God and his restoration in the final prose section.
Let us see where the story starts: ‘In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil.’ (1:1) It starts with an innocent man, on earth.
1. This Man is Innocent
When we move up to heaven in v. 6. we find this is not a mere human verdict on Job: it is the divine verdict: ‘“There is no-one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”’ (v. 8). And it is repeated at 1:22: ‘In all this Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing’; at 2:3: ‘Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job? There is no-one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited Me against him to ruin him without any reason.”’; and at 2:10c: ‘In all this, Job did not sin in what he said’. The worst God says of Job in the whole book is that he darkens God’s counsel with words without knowledge (38:2). His final vindication and restoration indicate that Job was innocent throughout. In no way are his sufferings caused by his guilt. In fact, it is the very opposite, isn’t it? According to the story, it was precisely because Job was blameless and upright that the suffering was unleashed on him in the first place. And because he behaves blamelessly under the first wave of suffering in Chapter 1, even worse suffering is meted out to him in Chapter 2. In Job’s case it is made clear to the reader that suffering is actually a commendation rather than a condemnation.
In those first five verses Job is presented to us as wealthy, contented, complete, conscientious, a great man – the greatest of his day. And blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. Whatever else this book is going to say to us, it makes clear that there is such a thing as innocent suffering.
And second, we notice that
2. God is Sovereign (1:6-8)
There is no hint of dualism here. Satan is not an alternative, evil deity, battling with God for the soul of Job. God has the initiative. God draws Satan’s attention to Job. This is not an unprovoked assault by Satan on Job. It is God’s mention of Job that provokes Satan’s slur on his character. And Satan is entirely under God’s control throughout:
‘The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.”’ (1:12)
‘The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, he is in you hands; but you must spare his life.”’ (2:6)
Not only is God’s absolute sovereignty revealed to us here in heaven, but it is also upheld on earth by every one of the protagonists in the book of Job. That will be part of the puzzling irony of the book – Job never doubts God’s sovereignty. He is clear throughout that God is responsible for what happens to him:-
In chapter 1:13-19, in one ghastly day, Job loses all his property and all his children to marauding brigands, lightning and a tornado, but at the end of it –
‘At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”’ (1:20, 21)
And then, when in chapter 2 he is using a bit of broken pottery to squeeze the pus from the suppurating boils that cover him from head to toe, he says, ‘“Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”’ (2:10b)
The book of Job sets the problem of innocent human suffering firmly within the framework of the absolute sovereignty of God. And that does not diminish the problem. It increases it.
But in this prose introduction we are given this invaluable account of the goings-on in heaven. We will not return there for a further glimpse in the rest of the book. Satan will never be mentioned again after 2:7. Job himself and the other humans in the story are never told of what has gone on in heaven. So we must ponder all the more carefully what we are privileged to be told about the heavenly drama, explaining the earthly tragedy of Job’s suffering in these first two chapters.
And we notice there is
3 A Double slander by Satan. Consider 1:8 – 11:
‘Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no-one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.” “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Satan replied. “Have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has? You have blessed the work of his hands, so that his flocks ad herds are spread throughout the land. But stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.”’
Satan slanders Job. ‘“Does Job fear God for nothing?”’ Job does not really love God or trust God – he is just using God to gain prosperity and happiness, according to Satan.
But notice this is not just an attack on Job: it is an attack on God’s assessment of Job. It is God’s verdict on Job that Satan is contradicting.
‘Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no-one of earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”’ (1:8)
Satan is impugning God’s judgement, God’s ability to weigh up a man, to know his true worth. In fact, it is God who is really being attacked by Satan. Satan is calling into question God’s justice. If God is duped by Job’s materialistic self-seeking, if God cannot see the truth about a person but is fooled by our pretending to love Him and to serve Him for His own sake, when actually we are only interested in ourselves, then the moral foundations of the universe are called into question.
If God is wrong about Job, then God is wrong. That is not just more serious than whether Job’s faith is genuine or not: it is infinitely more serious. If Job had proved to be a hypocrite, then he would just join all the rest of us for whom that is to a greater or lesser extent true. But if God had been wrong about Job, how could we know that He is right about anyone? If God can be fooled, what right has He to judge anyone? His justice is undermined.
So this double slander by Satan casts a new light on the rest of the book – when God allows Satan to afflict Job, it is not just Job’s faith that is at stake. It is God’s own honour. And in the remaining forty chapters we see:
4. God’s Honour Upheld
When God said, ‘“Have you considered by servant Job? There is no-one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil,”’ (1:8) and then ‘“Very well, then, everything he has in is your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger,”’ (1:12), and again, ‘“Have you considered by servant Job? There is no-one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason,”’ (2:3) and ‘“Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life,”’ (2:6) He was investing His honour in Job. Job never knew of what had gone on in heaven. He did not know that the honour of God Almighty was vested in him. But that is what is happening in the book.
In Genesis 1:27 we read that ‘God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him.’ It could be as the image of God. It means not so much as a representation, but as a representative. Humanity was to fill and rule the earth for God, as God. God reigns over His creation by means of the human race.
It is an awesome responsibility. It imbues us with a divine dignity – and of course it all went horribly wrong at the fall in Genesis 3.
But Paul wrote in Ephesians 3:10 about his responsibility to preach the gospel to everyone. ‘God’s intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in heavenly realms . . .’ God has invested His honour, His rule, His purposes, His wisdom, His gospel in His people on earth – and not just for the sake of those on earth, but for the sake of ‘the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms’. In some way we cannot fully grasp we are His image. He works through us.
In clinging on to God furiously through all his dreadful questionings in the chapters to come, Job was refusing to move out of that position, that relationship with God. He did not allow his circumstances to over-ride his relationship. He suffered dreadfully, completely innocent, completely unaware of the heavenly debate that lay behind the torture he was experiencing. But he threw it all up into the face of God. He did not let go of the facts that (1) he did not deserve what was happening to him, and that (2) God was responsible for what was happening to him. And through it all God’s honour was upheld. His character, His justice were being revealed to the heavenly powers. There were no human answers. The Mr. Fixits like me will be disappointed with that. But God worked in His mysterious way to achieve His purpose.
You and I are invited to stand in that position too. By relating to God we have His honour invested in us too here on earth. We are not called to be Job, but we are called to think like him. To that end, I though we might learn the four lines of Hebrew poetry Job speaks at the end of Chapter 1. It could be the start of our attempt in the next two Sunday evenings to get into Job’s thinking more than we yet have.
‘“Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked shall I return;
The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away;
Blessed be the name of the Lord.”’
(Job 1:21, RSV)