Soulfood

Alasdair Groves

Job is a difficult book to read. It is hard to empathize with this level and degree of suffering. The dialogues are long and repetitive. The questions it raises about God’s goodness are difficult questions. And God’s answer at the end is unsatisfying.

Why is the book of Job longer than a few chapters?Why are there 35 chapters of dialogue with his friends?

Perhaps the most vexing part of Job for many of us is that God never gives Job an explanation for his suffering. Job doesn’t get an answer to his questions, he gets a relationship with God.

If we have a choice between knowing the whys of the universe and having a relationship with God – choose the relationship with God.

God does not rebuke Job for asking why. It’s okay to wrestle with these questions. The book is long so that we are encouraged to care about these questions and to seek answers and to work hard to understand things that are hard to understand. The LORD has something better for us than easy answers.

We should be really frustrated with the way Job’s friends tried to comfort him. It should drive us *not* to approach the sufferings of others the way Job’s friends approach him.

Think about God listening to these dialogues with compassion and patience. Do we listen well to others even when they are speaking untruths, bad theology, unwise counsel? And then respond with 1/10th as many words as what we have heard..as counselors we need to be willing to listen patiently and make our words count when we respond.

Job’s many complaints cover the full breadth of human suffering. There is nothing we can go through that Scripture does not address. The length of Job helps us see this breadth.

We hear 4 counselors – Job’s wife, Job’s friends, Job, and God. Counselors are those who try to put wisdom into words for us.

Job’s wife counsels despair – just give up. Why bother doing what is right if it only leads to disappointment? Curse God and die. Answer: don’t give up. Don’t stop wrestling. In our despair (and in Job’s despair) we often feel petulant and act against the shepherd in petty ways. Let us rather hold on to our integrity – which is Jesus Christ’s blood shed for our sake.

Job’s friends counsel oversimplification. They exalt one truth to the exclusion of other truths and thereby commit heresy. Their insistence that Job is guilty of great sin and idolatry and that he needs to repent ignores his suffering and is contradicted by God’s own characterization of Job. We do need to repent where repentance is necessary. But our suffering often isn’t solely the result of our own sin and it isn’t the first place we should go.

God’s counsel to Job – I will give you a hearing. Job has asked for this many times in his discourses. And God meets Job in Job’s courtroom to honor Job’s request. He brings Job into the heavenly court where the story started. And God tells Job what he already knows. He re-orients Job away from the distorted perspective of his suffering and towards God’s love and care for Job. And in blessing Job and restoring him vindicates Job before the court of public opinion so that his friends must repent of their shaming of Job.

Job wrestles well. He makes mistakes and speaks untruths and he repents. He never lets go of God. And God honors and vindicates him.

We want to follow the path of our brother Job in wrestling well with God. Job’s wrestling was messy and full of mistakes. There is nothing we should hold back from taking to God. Knowing we are a mess should not keep us from crying out to God and asking hard questions.

But even more, we follow in the footsteps of the suffering One who wrestles perfectly. Jesus teaches us how to wrestle well with suffering. Jesus redeems our mistakes in wrestling and uses them for God’s glory. And he never lets us go but will bring us safely into God’s courtroom where we will be vindicated eternally.