A short study of Job.
In the warm and dry land of the East, the dung was not mixed with straw, but was carried in baskets to a place outside the village where it was usually burnt once a month. The rains reduced the ashes to a solid hill of earth, and the place used by the inhabitants of the village as a watch tower and a meeting place.
The Book of Job is regarded as one of the oldest books in the Bible. Job did not worship the stars or anything terrestrial; he worshipped the same God as Abraham.
He offered sacrifices for himself and his family; this was before the law was given to Moses by God. Job was regarded as a man of integrity, just and true, he had a fear of God and faith in him.
God described Job as there being none like him in all the earth, a man blameless, true, Godly, abstaining from everything evil. A man who God set a hedge about him and blessed the work of his hands.
In the Book of Job we get a glimpse into the spiritual world, we read of Satan walking up and down, going to and fro upon the earth, he’s never still, having no rest.
Satan the accuser challenged God to allow all that Job had been given to him, to be taken away from him and then Job would cease to serve God and deny his allegiance to him.
God allowed Satan to test Job, Job lost his possessions: his cattle, sheep, camels and his servants, all except the ones bearing the bad news that told him of his children’s death.
Job 1: 20, 21.
Job remembered how he came into the world with nothing and therefore he does not deny God.
Satan again came before God and challenged him, asking if he could touch Job in his flesh he would renounce God. Job 2: 5.
Satan attacked Job’s body with a disease; (Elephantiasis a form of leprosy) Job’s wife found that it was too much to see her husband suffer, she told him to renounce God and die. Job told his wife that she should be able to accept the bad news as well as the good from God, he did not blame God.
Jessie Penn Lewis’s book ‘The Story of Job’
“It is sometimes necessary to leave someone in the hands of God and encourage them to believe their way through the path of trial, because maybe God has allowed sickness as part of his purposes for that person.”
To leave some one in the hands of God – any one who is going through a time of trial or sickness needs prayer support from their church without judging that person as to why they are sick.
The three friends of Job: Eliphaz, Bildad and Zopher for seven days they sat with him on the ash mound. Job cursed the day of his birth. Job 2: 13.
Job was suffering so much he began to see death as a way out, an escape.
Eliphaz
The First of Job’s three friends Eliphaz spoke out in his usual candid way. He said, “Job you have instructed many in their pain, now it’s your turn and to remember your own advice, ’Trust in the knowledge of God, men reap what they have sown.’” Job 4: 7-11
Eliphaz had a dream, “A spirit passed before my face, a form was before my eyes, and I heard a still voice say, “Shall mortal man be just before God. Shall a man be pure before his maker?” Job 4: 12-17.
Eliphaz’s interpretation: Job was a sinner like everybody else therefore he should he should accept God’s chastening upon him so therefore he should ‘Go back to God.’ Job 5: 17
Job saw this as an attack on his integrity, he had not left God; he rebuked his friend Eliphaz, even though he knew that he did not understand. Job 6: 22-24.
Bildad
Bildad was regarded as his humble friend.
Bildad used the “if” word. If Job had sinned his suffering then would be as a result of it. (They believed that through the fall of Adam and Eve sickness and disease was a result of sin. The fall opened the door to sickness and disease, not all sickness is a result of personal sin.)
Job’s reply, “How can a man be just before God?” Job 9: 1,2.
Job asked God for forgiveness, knowing that he could not forgive on behalf of God, he could not cleanse himself. Job 9: 32, 33.
Who would plead to God for him and who would speak to him from God? He could only be declared not guilty by God.
Job pleaded to God; knowing that he alone knew all about him and perhaps it was his will for him to suffer. Job 10: 13
Zopher
Zopher said to Job, “Should a man who’s full of talk, be justified. Job 11: 1, 2, 13. 12: 3
“Cry to God and be forgiven.” Job replied, “I am not inferior to you.” Zopher was making him a laughing stock. Job said, “Do you not think that I am too proud to admit my sin, but I have not sinned.” Job saw their ignorance against him.
Job can not say how a man is justified before God, yet in his heart he believed that he ‘shall be justified.’ He would thrust himself upon God.
As yet he had no clear assurance of the life to come after death. Job 14: 14.
Eliphaz
Eliphaz accuses Job of having no fear of God because of the way that he had argued against their assumptions that he must have sinned. Eliphaz did not think that a man could be righteous before God; as even the heavens were not clean in God’s sight. Job 15: 14, 15.
Job had aroused the indignation of his three friends. His friends saw Job as being self-righteous as he constantly declared his integrity.
Job knew from his experience that God was approachable, he was clinging to the fact that God knew his life and therefore he would vouch for him that he had walked with him in the integrity of heart, the sacrifices he made pleased God and he had been blessed by him.
Job was prepared to die. Job 17: 16.
God was silent, be still in the darkness, do not kindle a fire yourself, wait upon God.
Job did not renounce God. He had a vision which was prophetical, “ “I know that my redeemer lives and at last he will stand upon the earth, and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then from my flesh I shall I see God.” Job 19: 25, 26
Job would see his redeemer face to face after his resurrection from the dead.
Job’s prophecy fulfilled in Jesus
Jesus died on the cross, suffering for the sin of the world. Jesus suffered: the loss of everything material, the broken will, to live for God in complete surrender. He was crucified, laying down his life for our justification, Jesus pleads to God for us, redeeming us from our sin.
Through our faith in him we are made clean from sin and the causes of sin. Jesus also speaks to us from God through his resurrection revealing himself in his word. Over 500 Christians had the privilege of seeing the risen Lord. 1 Corinthians 15: 6
Elihu
Listening to the conversation between Job and his three friends was a young man Elihu.
He held himself back until there was a pause in their conversation. The friends ceased to answer Job. Elihu had a message from God,” deliverance through the ransom.” Job 33: 24
Elihu had understood the dealings of God with Job, but he does not attempt to combat his insistence on integrity, as the other men did. He told him God had brought his soul from the pit and had enlightened him with the light of the living, his redeemer lives and the resurrection of the dead.
God had allowed Job to be withdrawn from the life he had, that he might save him from spiritual pride. God had brought him down from his high place, to make him know, himself, and his dependence upon God for every breath of life.
Job had seen his redeemer as the living one, who would vindicate him. Elihu spoke of the redeemer as the ransom, the one who would be gracious to him, and deliver him from going down to the pit, not on the ground of his own integrity, but on the ground of his faith and trust in God.
God would restore him with a new spirit as a child; a new freshness of life in heavenly youthfulness; a new power in prayer and joy in the knowledge of God; a new assurance of righteousness in union with the righteous one, the light of the living.
God restored to him his flocks and herds and once again sons and daughters graced his home.
Job lived for a further 150 years after the time of his trial.