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Question: Having gone through some tough times over the last 15 years, I've read the book of Job many times but haven't been able to comprehend what Job did to change his situation. His faith never seemed to be in question but he suffered great hardship. Can you explain what we should learn from Job?
PP
ATP: The book of Job is a complex book, the context of which must be understood to avoid great misunderstandings. Yet even when one understands the context of what happened to Job, it is difficult to be sure of what we should take away from certain passages of the book. I did not say it was impossible to be sure, only difficult.
Without rehashing the whole story let me lead in to an explanation of what I mean in order to answer your question.
Job goes through some of most difficult times a human being can face: the loss of his children, the loss of his finances and the loss of the respect of his wife. Outside his family circumstances, his friends who initially had come to comfort him, turned on him and began to blame him for his problems, saying in a variety of ways that such things as those that Job had faced, do not happen to righteous people. Their opinion was that Job must have done something to anger God and was only getting what he deserved.
Although Job initially handled the tragedies that came upon him with a grace that is hard to comprehend, in time he did begin to develop "an attitude" toward God and why these things had happened to him.
In the end God chastises Job’s "friends" for their bad counsel and for their inaccurate understanding of the purposes of God. So far off base are they that God requires them to repent by making a sacrifice and by going to Job apparently to personally apologize. Job is to pray for them that God not pour his wrath on them for their folly, and they get what they deserve for what they have said about God’s purposes!
If a person were to simply flop open the book of Job and begin reading the counsel given to Job by his well intentioned but badly mistaken friends, it would be easy to think that their counsel to Job was correct. It wasn’t, as God himself pointed out. And yet though the larger theme of their counsel is rejected by God, there is “truth” mixed in.
Job 5:17 So do not despise the discipline of the Almighty, is quoted in Hebrews 12:5 as being a truth we are to remember. Yet Job 5:17 is spoken by Eliphaz whom God chastised for not speaking truthfully. How do we sort out such things? Answer: very carefully.
My point here is that reading Job is not an exercise in simplicity and easy answers as to what the book means are often badly mistaken.
That may well be the point of the book of Job: To show us that God’s purposes are complicated and that we should not quickly judge the appearances of what is happening in a person’s life including our own. There may be a larger purpose involved that we will never understand this side of heaven.
Job was never told why he experienced all the trouble that came his way. He never knew that what he experienced would be a help to thousands and thousands over the centuries. He just had to trust. And that is another of the lessons in the book: We should trust God even when nothing around us makes sense. God is always up to something good.
There is a third lesson from the book of Job, and we need to be careful on this one so as not to misunderstand it or become stubborn when God may be trying to get our attention. The lesson is that there are hard times that happen in our lives that have nothing to do with anything we have done wrong or that God is trying to teach us.
There are those who mistakenly say that the reason Job faced the things he did was because God was trying to teach him something. That is flatly false. Did Job learn some things? Yes. And did Job eventually need to be taught some things because of the attitude he developed later? Yes.
But the evils that befell Job had nothing to do with any lesson God was trying to teach him. If you have been telling people otherwise, stop it. It’s a lie.
And if you are going through terrible times, yes it may be true that God is trying to teach you something, but as the song from Porgy and Bess said, It ain’t necessarily so. In other words, it doesn’t have to be the case, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
The reality is that you may be going through hard times for the same reason Job did: because by God’s grace and to God’s glory, you have been doing things RIGHT!!!
It makes me angry when I hear of people who have told others, "You are going through this hard time because God wanted to change some things in your life." How dare they say that! They are no better than Job’s poorly informed friends whom God chastised. What do they know about God’s purpose in someone’s life?
Job did not face what he went through because God wanted to change some things in Job’s life!! Yes later on, as Job developed the bad attitude, God did want to change Job. But that is not how the story started. Don’t ever forget that. When you are going through hard times, if you have honestly examined your heart for a season, and God has not revealed to you some issue that he is addressing through the trial, then let that thought go. Don’t beat yourself up looking for some way that you caused your own hardships by offending God in some way.
Just trust God that he knows what he is doing, even if you never get to find out what it was. And be strong enough in such circumstances to ignore the "blaming counsel" of well intentioned friends who want to lay guilt at your feet. And do so without debating things with them. That is what did get Job in trouble with God. Job’s defense and defensiveness led him into pride, which God did correct in his life.
Trust God, live righteously and be at peace, even when the waves are crashing in around you. God is not unjust. In the end, in heaven, when all the accounts are balanced, God will make things right. Count on it, even when you don’t understand it. That’s the lesson of Job.
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