Gifts of Job (Part 1)

I’ve never quite known what to do with the book of Job. I know the basic story, and I know it’s found right before Psalms in the poetry section of the Bible. But why was it written? What can we learn from it? I don’t think I’m alone in this. In the preface to his commentary on Job, Christopher Ash says that “Job is a neglected treasure of the Christian life. It has spawned an enormous outpouring of scholarly work, and yet few Christians know quite where to start in appropriating its message for themselves” (page 15).

This all changed a few summers back when I decided to confront the book of Job head on. As I read this perplexing book several times and considered Job’s story, I came to realize that Job is not only a beautiful book of Scripture, but it is also an incredible gift from God. Through this somewhat puzzling story of one ancient man, God has given us a number of gifts. In this post I hope to begin unwrapping a few of those gifts for you.

The Gift of Understanding

Most commentaries I’ve read believe Job was an actual person who lived during the time of the patriarchs – most likely during the same period as Isaac and/or Jacob. With this in mind, it appears that the story of Job’s anguish and his subsequent dialogs with his friends has been around for several thousand years. And yet Job was asking the very same questions we ask today. He poses questions such as, “Why does God allow bad things happen to good people?” and “Where is God when everything falls apart?” I wonder if Job was perhaps just a little like me: maybe somewhere deep down he thought that his uprightness, integrity, and religious observances would protect him from major tragedy. We can’t really know for sure. But my point is this: God knew from the very beginning that His people were going to wrestle with questions related to pain and suffering. God has always understood that His people will in some way, shape or form come up against this issue and ask the same kind of questions that Job did. So very early on God gave us the gift of the book of Job to assure us that He knows our struggle, and that he is not afraid of our questions in the midst of suffering.

The Gift of Honesty

Another gift I found in the book of Job is the assurance that I am free to struggle honestly before God. Job has some pretty dark things to say. in Job 3:11, for example, he asks, “Why didn’t I die at birth?.” In a moment of hopelessness, Job laments “my eye will never again see good (Job 7:7).” And in Job 16:7, he declares, “surely now God has worn me out.” Yet at the end of the story in Job 42 we find God Himself vindicating Job when he rebukes Job’s friends, informing them, “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:8).

The raw honesty of Job in his speeches is so different from my own experience. I try so hard to be “spiritual” when I pray, to tell God what I think a “good Christian” would say and to ask him for the “right” answers. But that is not what Job did. Instead, he models for us the truth of Hebrews 4:16—that we can come “boldly before the throne of grace to receive mercy and find help in our time of need.”  God invites us to come to Him. It doesn’t have to be pretty; we don’t have to get the words right; we just need to honestly tell God what’s on our hearts. Job is our example in this.

The Gift of Rejecting the “Right” Answers

Jobs friends said many things that seem to be very right—even if they weren’t particularly helpful. For example:

Eliphaz tells Job that he should “seek God” and awhile later reminds Job that he should not despise God’s discipline but welcome it (Job 5:8,17). Then God would deliver him (Job 5:19)

When Job continues to declare his innocence before God, Bildad exclaims in horror, “Are you accusing God of perverting justice?” (Job 8:3) There was no room in Bildad’s thought process for innocent suffering.

Zophar doesn’t beat around the bush but tells Job flat out to “put away iniquity” and “let not injustice dwell in your tents.”  Then, and only then, would God make Job secure again and cause Job to forget his misery. (Job 11:13-17)

And these answers sound so right, don’t they? Aren’t these still the same answers we tend to default to in our own lives? We want to figure out what lesson God is teaching us so that we can (hopefully) end the trial quickly. Or we desperately search our hearts to identify the sin that we’re supposed to repent of so that we can escape the distress.

There is most assuredly a time for identifying sin and areas of our lives that need correction, but suffering is not always due to our own sin. And, as with Job’s friends, pursuing these types of answers only adds layers of guilt and shame to our hurting souls. Through the example of Job, God gives us the gift of rejecting these “right” and “religious” answers. God states that these three men had not “spoken of Him what was right” (Job 42:7). Their theology started well but was ultimately insufficient as they made the rather arrogant assumption that they knew all there was to know about God’s purposes.

These are just a few of the gifts I discovered in the book of Job. I pray these thoughts have encouraged you. There are more gifts to unwrap, and in the next post, I’ll continue to share them with you.