“Have you considered my servant Job?” 

Who was Job? We are told that he was from the land of Uz. Uz was of the family of Noah’s son Shem. Abraham’s brother, Nahor, named one of his sons Uz. Perhaps the land of Uz was in the region of Uzbekistan, in Central Asia. When Job lived in the land of Uz we do not know. Some believe he could have been a contemporary of Abraham.

The first two chapters of Job record a dialogue between God and Satan. “Have you considered my servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.”

Satan answers, “Put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face. Skin for skin! Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life. However, put forth Your hand, now, and touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse You to Your face.”

Obviously, Satan does not share God’s opinion of Job, nor of mankind in general. Satan is called our accuser. And he dares to accuse God of misplaced trust in man. Satan is challenging God’s confidence in mankind. Job justifies God’s confidence. “Through all this, Job did not sin, nor did he blame God.”

When the Lord asks Satan from where he had come, Satan answers, “From roaming about on the earth and walking around on it.” The Word of God warns us, “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” Satan’s power on earth is real. The Lord Jesus, three times in the Gospel of John, refers to him as the “ruler of this world.” John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11

How did Satan become ruler of this world? By our first parents believing the lie rather than trusting God. One might ask, if God is all powerful, why does He allow Satan such power? But just think of our freedom to sin and do horrible things. Why does God allow us to do what we do? How shocking is this world in which we live. Yet how much more shocking it is to get a glimpse of the wonder of what God is doing through it all!

Theology of Job’s Friends

Before Job’s friends spoke, “they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and seven nights with no one speaking a word to him, “for they saw that his pain was very great.”

Then Job begins to lament; but in all of his lamentations, he never curses God. After listening to Job for a while, his friends attempt to teach Job what they believe about God and His ways. The basic premise of their religion is that the bad suffer and the good don’t. They attribute Job’s misfortune to his being guilty of some sinful thoughts or deeds.

Eliphaz‘s account of his vision in the night express Satan’s thoughts, not God’s. “A spirit passed by my face; the hair of my flesh bristled up. It stood still, but I could not discern its appearance; a form was before my eyes; there was silence, then I heard a voice. ‘Can mankind be just before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker? He puts not trust even in His servants; and against His angels He charges error. How much more those who dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust.’”

Bildad expresses a similar view. “How then can a man be just with God? Or how can he be clean who is born of woman? If even the moon has no brightness and the stars are not pure in His sight, how much less a man, that maggot, and the son of man, that worm!”

Satan had fallen from his high estate. It was his pride that brought him low. “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly, in the recesses of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” Isaiah 14:13-14 You will be like God, the serpent told Eve, like God, not God-like.

God knew that Job was not perfect, He also knew that in the Person of His Son, His eternal purpose to make man in his own image would be realized. Job was a promise of that hope.

Romans 3:23, is often quoted with the emphasis on the “all have sinned,” to the neglect of the second part, “and fall short of the glory of God.” Man was made to share the glory of God, and only God Himself can give His own glory. It took the Incarnation to complete man. God knew what He was doing; and was proud of this incomplete man Job.

Job’s friends talk a lot about God. He is way up there and we are way down here. “Is not God in the height of heaven? Look also at the distant stars, how high they are!” Job 22:12 It is a comfortable position for sinful man to take. How can we expect to draw too close to God! What does he care about me? Just look at the Universe. Isn’t man just an insignificant speck? Why should God expect too much from little me? If I give Him His due at the proper time, say great things about Him and belittle myself before Him, maybe He will leave me alone and not persecute me as He does the wicked. It is too easy to adopt Satan’s opinion of God, as did the man in the parable of the talents, “Lord, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered seed.”

Is this the nature of our God? Did He create us only for the purpose of paying Him His dues? Job made a lot of foolish statements, but he knew better than his friends, and would not be satisfied with the popular religion of his day. God said to Eliphaz, who was probably the eldest, “My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as my servant Job has.”

Job’s Cry

Job asks the question that David asked in Psalm 8:4. “What is man that You magnify him, and that You are concerned about him?” He calls God, “O watcher of men.” Job 7:17 & 20 Even though Job does not understand God’s intentions toward man, he knows that God has His hand on man in a special way.

In response to his friends’ sweeping statements about the greatness of God, His power, His deeds, “Can you discover the depths of God? Can you discover the limits of the Almighty? They are high as the heavens, what can you do? Deeper than Sheol, what can you know,”  Job answers, “Who does not know such things as these? I have heard many such things.”

At the same time that Job denies his friends’ accusations that he has not been good enough and that is why God is punishing him, he declares, “How can a man be righteous before God?” Job’s defense before his friends and God is that man cannot be compared with God. He dares to ask God, “Do you have eyes of flesh? Or do You see as a man sees? Are Your days like the days of a mortal man, Are Your years like the days of a mighty man, that You should seek for my guilt, and search after my sin?” Job 10:4-6

Wherein lies God’s interest in man? “What is man that You magnify him, and that You are concerned about him, that You examine him every morning, and try him every moment?” Job 7:17-18 “Your hands fashioned and made me altogether, and would You destroy me? Remember now, that You have made me as clay; and would You turn me into dust again? Did You not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese; clothe me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews? You have granted me life and lovingkindness; and Your care has preserved my spirit. Yet these things You have concealed in Your heart. I know that this is within You.” Job 10:8-13 See how Job is straining after God, to know Him, to find Him out! How God desires this of man!

“He made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:26-28

Job cries out, “O that a man might plead with God as a man with his neighbor!” Job 16:21 “Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come to His seat! I would present my case before Him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn the words which He would answer, and perceive what He would say to me. Would He contend with me by the greatness of His power? No, surely He would pay attention to me. There the upright would reason with Him; and I would be delivered forever from my Judge.” Job 23:3-7 What a man was Job!

The prophet Ezekiel says, “God waits to be enquired of.” Ezekiel 36:37 “Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18

Job, in spite of his bewilderment, has a deep sense, a prophetic sense, of God’s Ways. “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eyes shall see and not another.” Job 19:25-27

“From my flesh I shall see God.” After His resurrection, Jesus appears before His frightened disciples and says, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, (the imprint of the nails), that it is I Myself. Touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

Job had asked God, “Have You eyes of flesh? Or do You see as a man sees? Are Your days as the days of a mortal, or Your years as man’s years?” The answer to Job’s question is yes! The flesh and bones of Jesus were just like ours, only sinless; for His flesh and bones were the flesh and bones of God! And His flesh could die as can all mortal flesh. Jesus’ flesh died because our sin murdered Him. But death could not hold Him for He is The Resurrection and the Life. In Son, God has taken His stand on this earth, and in my flesh I can see God!

God’s Response To Job

The Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind or storm. Job 38:1, 40:6 Notes from the New English Translation state that this kind of a storm is such that brings a Theophany or a pre-incarnate appearance of God in flesh. God is answering Job in a special revelation of Himself.

There are two recorded appearances. In both, God tells Job to “gird up your loins like a man.” This idiom means, get ready for battle. Yes, man is a part of the battle between good and evil. God has made him so. What a place God has given man! God asks us to be on His side. Jesus said, “Strive to enter.” Luke 13:24 Strive to do battle with God, not against Him, but with Him.

God’s words to Job describe the battle. What are we dealing with here? In Job 41, God describes Leviathan. The description is like no living creature we know today. However, we have pictured such a creature. Who are we to say that such a creature never existed? Leviathan is a parable of Satan, the epitome of evil. “His strong scales are his pride… His heart is as hard as a stone…Nothing on earth is like him, one made without fear. He looks on everything that is high. He is king over all the sons of pride.”

The Lord warns Job, “Lay your hand on him; remember the battle; you will not do it again!”  God is sharing with Job something of the nature of the battle. Job’s religious friends made much of God’s great power and might. Leviathan represented something impossible to defeat by mere strength. God is showing Job that it is going to take more than power and might to stop evil, and we know that it took God’s own Life to stop evil and its hold on us.

Job’s Response To God

Before God’s special revelation, Job had said, “How can a human be just before God?….. For He is not a man as I am that I may answer Him, that we may go to court together.” Job 9:2 & 32 But after God revealed Himself to Job, his response is, “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

What did Job see that so changed him? Job saw something of what Peter saw when he said to Jesus, “Depart from me for I am a sinful man O Lord.” The wonder and mystery of the Incarnation can only be seen by the eyes of the soul, the soul that God breathed into the nostrils of Adam. It is through the soul of man and woman that our sinful flesh may be awakened to the revelation of Jesus Christ, that God has made Himself One of us, that God is to be our reference, not sinful humanity.

The Apostle Paul said to the polytheistic Athenians regarding their “unknown God, ” – “In Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His offspring.’ Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness, through a Man whom He has appointed having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” Acts 17:28-31

God has now spoken to us in flesh and blood. God has become Man in Son, Jesus. God is no longer way up there. He is here! This was Jesus’ Gospel – the Kingdom of God is near. What a difference this makes in how we look at ourselves. The implication for us is something beyond what we could ask or think. Almighty God is within reach. Yes Job, in my flesh I can see God!

After Jesus’ resurrection, the Apostle John wrote, “What was from the beginning what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life. And the Life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the Eternal Life which was with the Father and was manifested to us.” 1 John 1:1-2

Conclusion

Why did God ask Satan what he thought of the man Job? Because God was proud of Job! God was making man in His own image and after His likeness. God delighted in Job. Proverbs 8 describes God’s thoughts from before creation, thoughts of the eternal Son through Whom all was created. “Then I was beside Him as a master workman; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the world, His earth, and having my delight in the sons of men.” Proverbs 8:30-31

God has been coming into creation from all eternity, when he formed Adam out of the dust of the ground, and when he chose Abraham and his chosen descendants to carry the promised seed of the woman, preserving that seed through a peculiar people, the nation of Israel, and finally in the right time being born of woman uniting Himself with the human race in the Incarnation.

When Jesus appeared in a vision to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, Jesus said to Paul, “Why are you persecuting me?” When man suffers, God suffers because of His identification and union with us. God’s battle is man’s battle, and man’s battle is God’s battle.

What did Job see? Instead of a God Who couldn’t be touched, invulnerable to man’s efforts to get near Him, as Leviathan, God has made Himself vulnerable to man, vulnerable to mankind’s loving touch, and vulnerable to the whip, nails, and spear.

How did Job see something of the humanity of God? We cannot know that anymore than we can know the mystery of how God reveals Himself to us. But we can know that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:6 To those who truly seek His Face He reveals Himself. “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:13 We get as much of God as we want.

Jesus said, “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” John 14:1 Why can no one come to the Father but through Him? Because He is God’s only begotten Son. The word, “begotten,” speaks of human reproduction. Jesus is the real thing, God’s offspring. The angel Gabriel told the virgin Mary that her “holy offspring” would be the Son of God.

“Oh that I knew where I might find him,” Job cried. Moses cried out to God, “Show me Your glory.” Jacob wrestled with God and would not let Him go until He blessed him. They only got glimpses, but those glimpses were worth all of their suffering and struggles. Jesus said that Abraham saw His Day and was glad.

God’s eternal quest has been realized in His human Son. God has struggled, suffered, and died in battle to gain us. May we be willing to be joined to Him and with Him Who has won the battle for us.

We now live in the Day of God’s Great Salvation. Hebrews 2:3 Now, by faith, we may hear Him, see Him, know Him, and receive Him. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”  John 10:10

Rosemary E. Hyslop
April 24, 2013 – revised 1/31/15