Struggling Produces Belief
Job is one in every of 5 books in the course of our Outdated Testomony which might be known as “knowledge books”—Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Music of Solomon. In these books, there aren’t any nice occasions (like within the books of historical past or prophecy) and no new legal guidelines (like within the first 5 books of the Bible). These books aren’t a lot about creation or God’s company individuals, Israel. As a substitute, these books concentrate on particular person individuals who, in lots of respects, are like us. Like us, they expertise highs and lows in life.
So it was for Job. Job was a person who had all the pieces, misplaced all of it, after which in a stunning flip of occasions gained all of it again after which some.
The e-book of Job is about struggling and about God letting issues occur to you that you simply don’t perceive since you aren’t meant to. On the entire, Job speaks realistically about our struggling, explores the boundaries of what we will perceive, and compels us to belief God utterly.
We Can All the time Belief God
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul talks a few “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding” (Phil. 4:7). Being reconciled with God, in different phrases, implies that we may be extra glad in God than in any understanding we could have about our passing circumstances. That’s fairly a declare! However Paul says it clearly, and, in the event you’re a Christian, you’ve skilled as a lot.
The rationale we should belief is exactly as a result of we don’t perceive. As somebody who was once a skeptic, I do know that asking me to belief somebody as a substitute of understanding one thing can really feel difficult. However this doesn’t make the requirement of belief any much less vital. In truth, it’s not possible to be a Christian if we insist on residing solely in accordance with what we perceive aside from belief. Being a Christian requires that we belief God—even with the issues we don’t perceive, comparable to why we undergo.
Creator Mark Dever introduces readers to the Outdated Testomony as a wonderful entire in order that they’re able to see the large image of the majesty of God and the surprise of his guarantees.
The excellent news is, there are such a lot of causes to belief God! Let’s think about two.
1. God Is Highly effective
First, God is highly effective. The e-book of Job places the ability of God on show in stunning and noteworthy methods. The e-book asks us to ponder God’s creation of all issues. It reveals his energy and his competency. It exhibits how he providentially cares for each element in creation and the way this care redounds to his glory.
God is extra highly effective than the best and most fearsome of creatures on land and sea. He’s extra highly effective than the Behemoth and the Leviathan, two creatures described equally to the hippopotamus and the crocodile—solely super-sized (Job 40–41)! Some counsel these creatures are supposed to stand for evil itself—together with chaos and even Devil. No matter these creatures could characterize, they’re no match for the God who made them. God is their creator, and he’s extra highly effective than something that he has made. We shouldn’t concern something like we concern God himself. The whole lot and everybody solutions to him.
Good friend, what circumstances trigger you concern proper now? What wouldn’t it imply so that you can acknowledge that God is sovereign over them? And, in the event you have been assured that he was sovereign even over them, what distinction wouldn’t it make in your life? Job learns the reply to this query. In line with him, he had solely heard of God earlier than he suffered. Earlier than the story ends, Job learns the extent of God’s sovereignty and likens it to seeing God (Job 42:5). May this be the case for you?
2. God Is Good
The second cause to belief God is that he’s good. God exhibits his goodness by prospering Job on the finish of the e-book. There stays, nevertheless, one other attention-grabbing element within the e-book’s final chapter of Job: Job prays for his mates (Job 42:10). That strikes me as awfully magnanimous contemplating the best way they’d talked about him. But they ask Job to wish for them as God demanded (Job 42:8). By this demand, God makes it clear to Job’s mates that Job’s struggling was not attributable to his ethical inferiority to them. In truth, reasonably than Job being within the flawed, they have been within the flawed, which is why they wanted Job to wish for them.
It’s additionally attention-grabbing that Job’s responses to his mates all through the e-book communicates a dismissiveness over the state of man’s life. In a number of hauntingly stunning passages, Job speaks of man’s days being like a fleeting shadow, flying by quicker than the weaver’s shuttle, sure to return to the mud. But though he speaks this fashion, God and all his heavenly courtroom stay attentive to the affairs of the little kids of mud. Isn’t that tremendous?
Although we’re manufactured from mud, God cares for us as a result of he’s good. That is significantly clear within the introductory heavenly scene from chapters 1 and a pair of the place God provides Job to Devil as a way to check Job’s belief.
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Job was by no means instructed about this heavenly courtroom scene. Not like the reader of Job, Job himself seems clueless about Devil’s direct involvement in his sufferings. Now, it must be mentioned that Devil was flawed in his cost of Job. Devil first accuses Job of serving God for his personal egocentric ends—for wealth and standing (Job 1:9–11). God is aware of in any other case, however nonetheless he permits Devil to remove Job’s wealth. But Job nonetheless worships God. We learn, “In all this Job didn’t sin or cost God with flawed” (Job 1:22). Job was very rich, however he didn’t worship God merely as a result of he was rich. He worshiped God due to who God is. God is sweet.
His first effort having failed, Devil then accuses Job of solely serving God as a result of his well being stays. Devil rebuffs Job’s resilience and says to God, “Pores and skin for pores and skin! All {that a} man has he’ll give for his life. However stretch out your hand and contact his bone and his flesh, and he’ll curse you to your face” (Job 2:4–5). God once more is aware of in any other case. However for his personal functions, he permits Devil to remove Job’s well being. On this second spherical of testing, Devil is once more confirmed flawed. At the same time as Job’s personal physique decays and his spouse needs him lifeless, Job nonetheless worships God!
Job’s altering circumstances show that his belief in God isn’t as a result of God has given him wealth or well being. From this, we study that true worship of God is just not depending on circumstances. We will and may actually give thanks for good circumstances, however true worship acknowledges God’s supreme price over the best of temporal blessings and the worst of worldly woes.
In truth, this level attracts out some of the central ironies of the e-book of Job. All through the e-book, Job’s mates assume he suffers as a result of he sinned. Eliphaz even begins the ultimate cycle of the controversy by asking Job, “Is it to your concern of him that he reproves you and enters into judgment with you?” (Job 22:4). To this query, the reader desires to say “Sure! Precisely!” The difficulty is that Eliphaz means the query as a rhetorical one. His stance is just not the shrugging shoulders and upturned palms of Job, however the squinting eyes and pointing finger of the Accuser himself. Eliphaz is denying that Job has any concern of God in any respect. On this, Eliphaz’s disposition towards Job is extra like Devil’s than like God’s.
The reader is aware of that Job is certified to undergo as a result of he was righteous. Mockingly, had Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar been extra righteous—like Job—additionally they could have been chosen to hitch Job in struggling. You see, the story begins with God wanting over the world to determine somebody to brag about to Devil, and he lands on Job. God is the one who proposed Job to Devil (Job 1:8; 2:3). It’s God’s proposal to Devil that kicks off the whole story.
What does all this imply for us? It implies that our belief of God shouldn’t be primarily based on our personal character (holy, robust, intelligent, and many others.). As a substitute, our belief have to be in God’s character as a result of his character is completely reliable. God is each all highly effective and completely good.
Someday in the past, I sat securely on a aircraft as we taxied for take-off from the Kansas Metropolis Airport. As we ready to take off, I suppose I may have stood up and shouted, “Cease the aircraft!” I may have then gone to the cockpit and demanded that the captain present me copies of our taxying route, the runway we’d be utilizing, and the timetable for different flights taking off across the identical time. I may have executed all this as a way to fulfill myself that we’d, actually, be secure taking off in Kansas Metropolis amid so many different planes. As I say, I may have executed that. I didn’t do any of these issues. Why? As a result of I belief the pilot and the air site visitors controllers. So as a substitute of barging into the cockpit, I sat again and relaxed because the aircraft rolled across the tarmac and ultimately lifted into the sky.
Likewise, we should belief the true Controller, who makes no errors, who by no means sleeps nor slumbers, and in whom is just not the slightest contact of evil. At instances, God generally graciously lets us see a few of how he makes use of a troublesome state of affairs for our good, and we must always thank him for such events. However there may be hazard in assuming that he should give us such understanding. God by no means means for us to belief our personal skill to determine God’s objective in a troublesome circumstance. He means for us to belief God and his character.
God is each all highly effective and completely good.
To make sure, a counterfeit belief in God may work generally, nevertheless it won’t lastly work. Finally, solely God is reliable. Job knew as a lot when he declared, “For I do know that my Redeemer lives, and eventually he’ll stand upon the earth” (Job 19:25).
How would Job’s Redeemer redeem? By residing extra completely than Job ever may and by taking upon himself extra struggling than Job ever knew. Job’s endurance amid struggling was lastly meant to level us to the genuinely excellent righteousness and wholly undeserved struggling of Jesus Christ on the cross. By way of Christ’s loss of life on the cross and his resurrection on the third day, Christ would defeat the powers of sin and loss of life. God then guarantees to forgive everybody who repents of their sins and trusts in Christ. Everybody who does simply that, together with Job, will stand with their Redeemer ultimately. We greatest perceive Job by understanding Jesus. As John Stott put it, “The cross doesn’t clear up the issue of struggling, nevertheless it provides us the suitable perspective from which to view it.”1
If you’re a baby of God, reconciled to him via Christ, understand that even your struggling can exquisitely show the glory of God as you belief him. It could simply be that God is sitting in heaven proper now, saying to the heavenly host round him, “Have you ever thought of my servant, [insert your name]?” May or not it’s that someday you’ll watch as God exhibits to all creation the presently unrevealed glories of what he has achieved via your struggling?
Job’s struggling begins to assist us assemble an understanding of the struggling of the righteous. Struggling is most usually related to sin in our fallen world—and rightly so. Sin is the place struggling comes from. However Job’s mates mistakenly took the final rule of the Proverbs—struggling relies by private sin—as if it have been the one rule of struggling. This fails, nevertheless, to acknowledge a vital class—that of righteous struggling. Job was digging out the basement, because it have been, for the struggling that Jesus himself would someday know. As Job suffered as a result of he was righteous, so Jesus would undergo as the one true righteous man. Solely in Jesus’s case, he suffered not solely as a result of he was righteous but additionally for the unrighteous. He did this in order that, in him, we could also be made righteous like he’s.
Sunday by Sunday, members of church buildings encourage one another with this reality. We sing of it in our hymns. We pray for one another to maintain trusting the Lord. We lengthy collectively for our heavenly reduction, and we develop in our confidence within the guarantees that he has set earlier than us. The whole lot that God does he does for his personal glory.
Notes:
- John R. W. Stott, By way of the Bible via the 12 months: Day by day Reflections from Genesis to Revelation, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Monarch, 2014), 88.
This text is tailored from The Message of the Outdated Testomony: Guarantees Made by Mark Dever.
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