Job Replies: My Redeemer Lives 19 Then Job answered and said: 2 “How long will you torment me and break me in pieces with words? 3 These ten times you have cast reproach upon me; are you not ashamed to wrong me? 4 And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself. 5 If indeed you magnify yourselves against me and make my disgrace an argument against me, 6 know then that God has put me in the wrong and closed his net about me. 7 Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered; I call for help, but there is no justice. 8 He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. 9 He has stripped from me my glory and taken the crown from my head. 10 He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope has he pulled up like a tree. 11 He has kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary. 12 His troops come on together; they have cast up their siege ramp against me and encamp around my tent. 13 “He has put my brothers far from me, and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me. 14 My relatives have failed me, my close friends have forgotten me. 15 The guests in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger; I have become a foreigner in their eyes. 16 I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer; I must plead with him with my mouth for mercy. 17 My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother. 18 Even young children despise me; when I rise they talk against me. 19 All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. 20 My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. 21 Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! 22 Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh? 23 “Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! 24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! 25 For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. 26 And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, 27 whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! 28 If you say, ‘How we will pursue him!’ and, ‘The root of the matter is found in him,’ 29 be afraid of the sword, for wrath brings the punishment of the sword, that you may know there is a judgment.” Job once again tells his friends that their argument has no standing because first of all there is no hidden sin in his life as they accuse him of and his maladies and the circumstances he's in alone do not justify their remarks. Next he said that even if he did continue in some sin that the sin would be something he would have to live with and he would know he was under God's condemnation and that alone would be punishment enough, but that it would be God and not man that should correct him in such a situation--they have not been wronged and should stop acting like God's attorneys, because He doesn't need any (and they are doing a lousy job at defending God anyways).
Job then turns his attention to God and says that God has committed violence against him. Job has cried out for justice, but none has been given. Job feels like God has laid a trap for him, ensnared him and left him to die, and he feels like God has made him his adversary (enemy). Then Job recounts some things that we probably have assumed to this point, but have not heard him say specifically--all of Job's friends and family have abandoned him during this time with the exception of these three "friends" who are as bad as enemies. Job's employees (his servants) will have nothing to do with him. His wife will not get close to him and even his own siblings have deserted him. I'll stop here to say that probably all this is real, but it's very true that sometimes people in the depths of depression perceive that they are abandoned even though they have not been. Their mind does not remember the people that are there for them and the time that they spend with them. I've been on both sides of this being the person that shut myself away from others and then complaining that no one came to me and the one who came close to someone trying to shut everyone out only to continue to hear that "no one cares about me" when I was sitting right there with the person. I don't know Job's situation or state of mind here but can speak from my experiences that if you are the depressed person you need to do your best to continue to allow access for the people that care most about you--it won't matter how you look or how your house looks or that you have no energy or that it will be hard for you to want to do anything with them. They will understand that you don't want to go out at first, but maybe a good friend will even force you to have a good meat, a goon night's sleep, some good exercise, and/or a day of something fun and enjoyable surrounded by people that love and care for you that you forgot about. If you are that person who has been shut out, don't give up on the depressed person. Start off slow and just sit with them and listen to them. Pray with them and get their attention focused on God and off of their problems. Don't minimize what they are feeling, but help them see that truth is not determined by what we feel. Read the Psalms with them as David shows us how to grieve and mourn, yet always come back to who God, what He has done and the hope that we have in Him. Try not to blame the person for how they feel or tell them to "snap out of it" or "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" or anything like that. Encourage them to get professional help if they need to, but be careful about recommending that they go to secular counselors who won't weight the spiritual side of things or pastors who may not be trained in the physiological side of things. The best advice I can give personally is to see help from a Christian counselor and a medical professional. Go to the counselor for the emotional issues and for help with putting your life back together and dealing with the issues that are the trigger, and sometimes something like a support group may be helpful and it is best if the help you get from that support group is centered in the Word of God and focuses on the God that we worship and praise even in the midst of the storms of life--there is something amazing about turning your eyes to God and praising Him even when you don't feel like it that makes everything else feel small in comparison when you focus on Him alone. That said, do not ignore the physiological component that we can now do something about that probably wasn't available to Job. We understand more, but still don't understand a lot, about brain chemistry and neurotransmitters and how how they play a role in depression. The problem is that the feelings we describe as depression can be a symptom of may different kinds of problems and they all need to be diagnosed and treated differently. Just giving someone anti-depressants may actually harm them and not help them in some situations--for instance, if the issue has been caused by a traumatic brain injury that is causing the chemical imbalance. I'll get back to the text shortly, but one thing that I will say here is to not let the person that is depressed self-medicate with drugs or alcohol. This is a vicious cycle as even the things that help you feel "up" will face the law of diminishing returns and will actually make the "lows" feel "lower" and people have to continue to take the drugs to feel well. Those who turn to depressants like alcohol to "numb" the pain and suffering end up making their situation worse as these drugs can intensify the issues related to depression. Also, you should never mix any anti-depressants with alcohol or "recreational" drugs and should even be careful with taking over-the-counter medications with them as some things will hurt the effectiveness of those medication or may actually intensify them and give you too strong of a dose. This is why I was saying it's important to not just talk to friends or counselors, but to try to bring in a medical professional into the conversation--especially if you are taking medications for other conditions as well that your counselor may not know about or ask about. Okay, moving back to the book of Job, we are about to get into the most important thing that Job says in this passage. I encourage you to keep reading his remarks to his friends, but I want to jump ahead to verse 23 and spend some time focusing on verse 25. Job wishes that his words were written down in a book for all people of all times to remember (well, that happened as we're reading his words and his story today--probably thanks to the friend who has been silent for so long but will speak in a bit--Elihu). Job then makes a profound statement that seems to come out of nowhere, "For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth." What are we to make of this? Well, we know that Job is prophetically talking about Jesus here, but what makes Job's mind turn from the desertion of his friends and family and his pain and suffering to this thought? I honestly don't know, but isn't it interesting that Jesus faced all this and more during His life here? He was completely innocent and yet was over and over again accused of being a law breaker. He was surrounded by "bad" things that happened to Him and His friends that his enemies and so-called friends pointed to as evidence that He could not be who He said He was, because if He was really the Son of God, then He could keep these bad things from happening to Himself and others. He lost His cousin and one of His best friends in ministry, John the Baptist, and His friend Lazarus, and He had many people reject Him and walk away from Him. He was bruised, beaten, scorned and mocked, and left to hang on a cross to bleed out, for the sun to bake Him and for the birds to eat His flesh. His enemies rejoiced at His suffering and continued to mock Him, even making fun of his name which means "Savior" to say "He said He could save others, but He cannot even save Himself," and to jeer Him and say "If you are the Son of God, come down off of the cross," and all this was done at the hand of God, so the story of Job and the story of Jesus are very much alike in that we see both fingered by God to say "Have you considered this one? There is none like him." to the devil and the devil was insistent on trying to make both of them trip up, but Jesus succeeded where Job would not, and Jesus would willingly go through all of this without reviling God so that He could take the wrath that we deserved. He would purchase our pardon with His blood and be our Kinsman Redeemer (we'll talk more about that in the book of Ruth and possibly in the book of Deuteronomy when we get there). But Job doesn't just talk about God being our Redeemer, He seems to understand that God will come down to Earth to accomplish this redemption. Could it be that Job understood something of penal substitutionary atonement even at this point in history? Is it really possible that this man that seemed to be filled with wisdom and given the gift of prophecy at some points by the Holy Spirit could have understood that redemption from sin was the biggest issue at hand and that only God could solve that issue and that His answer (which He gave in the book of Genesis) was for "the seed of the woman" to crush the head of the serpent and that maybe, just, maybe, Job understood that this Messiah would have to be God in the flesh for this to work because no one else could be perfect to be able to be the substitute for the sins of all mankind? It is possible, but even if Job didn't understand all of that at the time that he made the statement, we can understand all of that now as part of what the Holy Spirit was speaking through Job here. As we sit on this side of the cross we can look back to the Old Testament and see that there has been a "scarlet thread" running through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation where everything looks forward or back to the gospel of Jesus Christ and its work in the hearts and minds of God's people to change them into the people that He has called them to be and to be citizens fit for His kingdom--a kingdom that will have no end under the authority of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That's a lot to say about that one verse, but there's even more that Job says here as we wrap up. Job seems certain that there will be a day of reckoning where all men will stand before their Creator as their Judge. There is no escape from this, even in death, but yet Job says that He knows he will see God "in his flesh" presuming that Job understands that after death, he will receive a new body. That's something that we even see the early Church confused about and even many today. Yes, God will give us a body like the Resurrection body of Christ--we will not simply be non-corporeal spiritual beings floating around on the clouds. We will see God and stand before Him in the flesh on that day, and our hearts will "faint" as Job says here either with joy--I think that's the emotion that Job is trying to convey here--or they will melt in fear as we stand before the Righteous Judge that we have lived in rebellion against for our entire lives. He then seems to return to talking directly to his friends saying that we do not seek after God--no God is the one who hunts us down! And, it is true what Job says that "The root of the matter is found in Him." It is sufficient for us know the gospel and to let it change us and to know God and enjoy Him forever. Truly this is the "root of the matter" and the chief end of man. But how can we worship that which we do not know? We cannot, and God must reveal Himself to us through His Word--through the Law, and the books of History, and the Prophets of the Old Testament and also through the Gospels, the history of the early Church in the book of Acts, the Epistles and the book of Revelation in the New Testament. On top of this, we know Him by what He has done in and through us. We should not be so quick though to wish for death to relieve someone's pain. That seems to be Job's final remark here as "It is appointed man once to die and after that, the judgment." Job seems to be telling his friends that he is ready to stand before God as Judge, but he's not so sure that they are (though he doesn't go to the level of accusations that they have made against him). Do you think they will understand what he says and heed his wisdom or do you think they will be angered by it or do you think they will miss it completely and not even look at themselves and turn their fury back against Job while ignoring their own needs? We'll see next time when Zophar speaks. We're nearly half-way through the book of Job now. Tomorrow's statement from Zophar and then Job's reply to it will wrap up this "round" of arguments and there will only be one more "round" after that (or so it would seem, but not everything has been said that that point). Job will give a long closing argument after which Elihu will finally speak and rebuke Job's three friends. We haven't heard from Elihu at all and it is safe to assume from what he says that he stayed silent because he was the youngest, and we might also assume that he was there taking notes and might possibly be the author of the book. He will speak uninterrupted by Job or any of Job's friends. After this, God Himself will speak and challenge Job to the debate that he said that he wanted with God, but Job will speak only to say how foolish he was to challenge God--not good enough though, because the correct response would be to stand in silence and not speak at all, so God makes another round of argument and finally Job is humbled to the point where he covers his mouth and does not speak. God will then turn His attention to Job's friends and correct them and restore to Job everything that he has lost. I know it's going to take us a while to get there--we probably finish up in about 3 weeks as there are 42 chapters in Job and we're about to start chapter 20 tomorrow and there will be a day or two where we cover 2 chapters at once because one of the participants will make a long argument.
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Daniel WestfallI will mostly use this space for recording my "journal" from my daily devotions as I hope to encourage others to read the Bible along with me and to leave a legacy for others. Archives
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