THE "REAL LESSON" IN THE STORY OF JOB
I titled this the "real lesson" because God has opened my eyes to see something in Job's story that ended up being a very relevant, real lesson in my own life. I can know about a certain truth, but I can't really know that truth in a deep way until I experience it. Without experiencing it, I can have some knowledge about it, but no real wisdom about it. For the past three years, I have experienced God's process of testing and refining of faith, through his real-life lessons. These have been hard lessons because they have involved addition by subtraction, which is somewhat similar to the counter-intuitive math lesson Job received from God too. The numbers I have experienced are on a lower scale than Job's but the lesson application is similar. God does not use a specific formula in the same way with each person, but he does apply a similar method to some of the issues he deals with in us.
I had always thought and assumed that the story of Job was just about a man who lost everything he had because God was testing Job's faith in Job's ability to be faithful to God. I have since learned that true faith, again, rests in God's far greater faithfulness to us. He's the Faithful One, not me, and his faithfulness reveals his sovereignty over every circumstance and crisis that happens around me. He is faithful to me despite my moments of faithlessness. It is God's faithfulness to us that this world needs to hear about, not my own ability to be faithful to God.
The "real lesson" that God has been teaching me in Job's story had to do with some spiritual thin ice that I was beginning to walk on, even though I didn't realize I was on such footing. Like Job, I had exercised my free will, by telling God that I wanted to obey his will, but I did not realize whatever I had done for God at that point was nothing more than self-righteousness in my own mind. Because we live in worldly merit system for rewards, it is very easy to let that kind of thinking become a basis in our personal relationship with God. Yes, we work and go to school according to this world's merit system way of doing things, but when it comes to the things of God's Kingdom, he offers us a far greater additional advantage: All merit is in his Son, and all power to live is in his Son's Spirit. God wants us to rest in that fact, and walk according to it by faith in him. God is only looking for a faith channel that he can work through, not a "try harder" channel" that we try to work through.
God's math of addition by subtraction, and Job's exercising of his free will to obey God's will, no matter what, is seen in these words from Job: "Naked I came from from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21). Job exercised his free will to praise God, despite his afflictions, feelings, and lack of understanding as to why God was allowing this hardship, crisis, and suffering into his life. Our free will is in our soul, because God calls us "living souls," and who we are is based on the choices we make. God offers us salvation through faith in Christ, and throughout our life he oftentimes offers us two paths to take, but then he wants us to choose which way to go. Furthermore, he does us responsible for seeking him, listening to his voice, and faithful obedience to him. We have to exercise our will in order to choose to do any of this.
God does not impose his will on us, does not coerce us, and does not will for us. He does work in us, through his indwelling Spirit, to strengthen our will. Then it is our will that enables us to choose his way, even when it is hard for our feelings to do so. Once we have used our will to obey his voice, God then does work out his good pleasure, or his will, through us. But he requires us to first come into agreement with him, by exercising our free will. Only then can we receive all of his gracious power to do whatever he has asked us to do. And whatever we do for him is only accomplished, in the way that he wants it to be accomplished, as we trust him to do it through us. He does not do it instead of us, or for us, but he does it with us and through us.
God wants us actively engaged in cooperation with his voice, using all of our natural capacities and abilities, but seeking his guidance, and depending on his power. Satan, on the other hand, tries to lure us into a complacent, passive state, so that he can coerce, deceive, and manipulate us into obeying his will. If we give him legal ground to influence us, he will do everything he can to penetrate us and control us eventually. Because God does everything according to his spiritual laws, and because he is righteously just, he will not prevent Satan from affecting us in certain ways. So, what we need to know is how to distinguish God's thoughts and will from Satan's lying thoughts and deceptive, evil will.
To help us know the difference, God gives us his indwelling Holy Spirit to discern and reveal truths from lies. We also have to understand the spiritual laws that govern who is actually dealing with us. What we choose to do with the functions of our spirit, soul, and body, determines the access we give to the enemy. If we shut down our God-given functions, expecting God to will for us, and do everything instead of us, we open ourselves up to the enemy's false deceptions and counterfeit sensations. We passively accept everything as being from God, or according to God's will, when in fact it can just as easily be the enemy working to deceive us.
God wants our intuition, conscience, will, and mind to be "watchful and alert," so that we do not open any doors to Satan and his cohorts. The Bible says that Jesus "emptied himself," but his example means that we also should "empty ourselves" by quieting down our mind and emotions, and putting our will on temporary hold, in order to hear God's will as he speaks to us. We empty ourselves by putting aside preconceived ideas and expectations. We empty ourselves by laying aside our feelings and emotions for the moment. Jesus emptied himself by starting out each day in prayer to the Father, and seeking his Father's will and power for that day. Once committed to his Father's will, Jesus then moved out in the Spirit of God to do whatever his Father commanded him to do.
We should connect consciously with our Father in prayer, just as Jesus did. The way he emptied himself was to humble himself before the Father in prayer and take on a slave's attitude of service toward people. This is how we should empty ourselves also. We should never empty ourselves in order to enter into a mysterious spiritual realm that is not completely focused on God's Spirit alone. When we call on the Lord, we enter his spiritual realm by waiting on him to speak his thoughts to our spirit. Emptying ourselves by listening to any spirit that wants to speak to us is very, very dangerous because Satan and his evil demons are looking for empty places to enter and control. He can come "disguised as an angel of light," along with his ministers of unrighteousness, in order to deceive Christians with counterfeit supernatural sensations and thoughts that are not from God. Satan always operates from the outside in, whereas God always operates from the inside out. If the thoughts you are receiving seem to be coming out of nowhere, you will sense the lack of God's peace in those thoughts. They will usually be thoughts that are pushing you to do something now, rather than giving you time to consider those thoughts against God's Word, and then allowing you to exercise your will to choose whether or not you want to obey. Instead, you feel as though you're being pushed into doing something quickly. God does not deal with us this way.
Looking at Job's story from a human perspective, rather than from God's perspective, it can seem as though God is someone external only who tests our faith in a pass-fail way, by allowing everything to be taken away from us at certain times, and then restoring whatever we've lost only if we hang on to our own ability to be faithful to him. But his testing of us is not according to the world's merit system for reward. It is not a test that looks to prove if we are good enough or religious enough at certain points. Instead, he tests us in order to purify, refine, and strengthen our faith in him alone. At the same time, he walks us through his testing of us, teaching us every step of the way and picking us up when we fall down.
Self-willing ourselves to be faithful to God, in order to then earn, merit, and deserve his faithfulness, is not what God wants from us. However, exercising our free will to obey his will is what he's after, because he does call us to make choices, and he does hold us responsible for the choices we make. But he does not impose his will on anyone, and does nothing to negate the free will he has given us. Nowhere does the Bible imply that God wants us to be his puppets, or chess pieces that he moves around against our own will. Satan, however, wants to tempt us to believe that we must always be doing 7 or 8 things necessary to make ourselves be better Christians first, before God will listen to us and bless us. This enemy is looking to lure us onto that sinking sand of self-righteousness, convince us that we are in the middle of some hardship because God is exasperated with us, or is trying to get us to believe that God is not going to be so quick to forgive us this time. He will also try to tempt us to believe that God is too busy for us, that he's working right now with other people who are better performing Christians than we are, or that God does not really care about us as much as he says he does. If we listen to these lies and accept them as though they are coming from God, we will find ourselves trying harder to earn God's love and favor. At some point though, we have to get to a point where we say to the devil, "No, it's opposite from what you say. I cannot make myself well until I see the doctor first, so stop trying to dissuade me from prayer."
Choosing to accept his word by faith, listen to him, and follow in his ways, is the first step he asks us to take. Then, with our will set to obey his will, he will begin to reveal his day-to-day will to our spirit's intuition and conscience. At that point of revelation, he asks us to choose once again whether we will follow him or not. Faith without works is dead faith, he says. God is Spirit, and his purpose in giving us a new spirit, united in his Spirit, is for us to be able to communicate with him and know his will. That is why we can know God's will intuitively before our mind fully understands it. At that point, God wants us to use our mind to test the source of what we have received in our spirit. So, he calls us to compare what we have intuitively heard in our spirit, to what his Word tells us in the Scriptures. We cannot just assume that every thought we receive is from God because Satan is capable of whispering counterfeit thoughts to us as well. Even if we do not yet know the source of what we've been told, we can still exercise our will and say, "I choose to obey God's will, not Satan's will, and not my own will." And at that, God's Spirit within us will then discern the source of that whisper and reveal the source of it to us. He will confirm if it is from him, usually with an inner "peace that passes all understanding." This is one way he will use to "guide us into all truth."
From Job's perspective, his experience of hardship appeared to him to be a test of his own faithfulness to God, and it was a test that he struggled mightily to try and pass in his own strength and willpower. But Job did not know about the conversation that God had with Satan before any of this testing began. And Satan did not see what it was in particular that God was trying to purify and refine in Job's faith. To the devil, it was just about this: "Take everything away from Job and he will curse you to your face." Then, in Satan's mind, it was about, "Skin for skin. Man will do anything to save his own life." But God was going after something deeper in Job's idea of what faith meant. God was looking to guard Job's soul, by revealing to Job that his faith in God was not a faith that was actually resting in God's faithfulness to him, and in God's sovereignty over Job's circumstances. God was also going after the fact that Job's faith was actually being based on Job's own false sense of self-righteousness, which God calls "filthy rags," and will not accept from us.
We can easily become preoccupied with trying to avoid the "sins of the flesh," but God is just as opposed to the "works of the flesh." These works of the flesh can include even our most well-intentioned and honorable religious works. Because God says that "the flesh avails nothing," he looks mostly at the source of our works, to see whether they are originating in his Spirit, or originating our flesh. Are we the ones who are initiating our own good works, in order to try to appease, satisfy, and honor him in a way that seems right in our own eyes? Or are we truly listening to his voice first and then following his leading? In other words, who's running the show? God is not focused only on our conduct, but on the source of our conduct. Are we trying to only do things in the natural for him, or are we really allowing him to do the supernatural through us?
The world can do good things for other people, but God calls his sons and daughters to do great things. A doctor can save someone's life on an operating table, and that is certainly a very good thing. But that doctor knows he cannot save that person's life forever. As a Christian person however, God wants to use you to save people forever. Only he has the power to do that, yet he chooses to do it through us as his representatives. Because the secret to the Christian life is "Christ in you," we need not ask ourselves if God is pleased with us, as much as we need to see that God is pleased with his Son, who lives in us by his Spirit. It is his Son who pleases him, and Jesus made it clear that Father and Son are one. The Father says to us, "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased. Listen to him." If we are really giving Christ his rightful place in our heart as King of kings, and in every area of our life as Lord of lords, then our Father is pleased with us.
As far as righteousness, or our right standing with God goes, we are declared righteous by God because the Righteous One died for the unrighteous, and he's the One who lives in us today. This gift of righteousness from God, through our faith in his Son, is our foundation for personal relationship with our Father. This is "the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith toward God" (Hebrews 6:1). And again, God calls us to "purify our conscience from dead works to worship the living God" (Heb. 9:14). God's gift of righteousness to us in Christ is the basis upon which we have peace with God. This is the "peace that passes all understanding" because we do not deserve it and did not earn it. If we try to pay God for his gift to us, through our own human plans, works, and efforts alone, we are insulting God by minimizing what he did on the cross for us in Christ. For this reason, what kind of righteousness we are standing on is of utmost importance to him. Our foundation of righteousness also determines how much God's grace will be continually manifested in our life. God will not continue to pour out his grace, which includes his undeserved kindness and ability to do what we cannot do, if we are trusting only in our own human strength, rather than truly trusting in his supernatural power to lead us and work through us. If you and I are not seeing evidence of God's power in our life, we need to look at what kind of righteousness we're actually standing on. Are we standing on his declared, undeserved gift of righteousness, or is it a right standing that we are trying to establish through our human exertion alone? There is a huge difference in God's eyes.
Nowhere did Jesus tell us that we could make ourselves become "good enough," or "religious enough" to earn or merit God's favor. If he is truly living his life through us, we will find ourselves being led of God's Spirit to do things out of a compassion, rather than out of obligation and compulsion. When God calls us to deny self, carry our cross, and lose our life for his sake, he is calling us to a self-sacrificial love that is willing to wash other people's feet, even the feet of those who strike us as being somewhat like Judas. He is calling us to embrace the cross of Christ, which we can only do by the strength of God's grace. If we are willing to embrace that cross by faith, then God declares us righteousness, even though we still do commit sins against him at times.
Job's story is a story about a man who believed in God, and saw God as awesome in power. He had a holy, reverent fear of God, believing God to be the Creator of the universe and the source of all life. This is where faith in God begins. It is a measure of faith, as small as a mustard seed, that God gives every one of us. "By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God's command, that what we see did not come from anything that can be seen" (Hebrews 11:3). Like all of us, Job had been created with a certain measure of faith, and he used that measure of faith along with his will to obey God's law. But somewhere along the way, Job's perception of God became skewed. It was not a full, balanced image of God's holy nature and character. Job was beginning to develop a false image of God in his own mind, based on how Job functioned in his own day-to-day life. When we start to see God on our own natural terms, he often steps in and allows certain circumstances into our life, in order to get our attention and remind us, "No, I am not like you." Thank God he's not like us. If this perfectly holy God judged people the way we do, we would all stand condemned before him.
Based on what Job says, we can see that he was a judge at the city gates. He settled disputes and he says that he had the last word in these matters. He had a position of authority that compelled people to adhere to his judgment or mercy. This picture of what a judge should be in this natural world, influenced how Job saw God as just and righteous. But Job's problem in seeing God's justice accurately began by somehow drifting away from seeing that God's mercy is just as righteous as his judgment. In other words, Job was swinging to one side of a pendulum that saw God's judgment outweigh God's mercy. The Bible, however, tells us that God's mercy outweighs his judgment, and that becomes clear to us when we see his judgment and mercy come together on Christ's cross.
God is willing to be merciful to anyone who chooses to believe him and put their trust in him. But Job's false perception of God's righteousness being like ours, began to cause Job to start becoming overly sin-conscious, and this got to the point where Job was becoming overly self-conscious. As he was becoming more sin-conscious and self-conscious, he was also becoming less and less God-conscious. He was no longer seeing God for who he truly is, and at the same time time, Job was no longer seeing who he was actually becoming. Job's preoccupation with looking inward at self caused him to make his faith in God a "work," where he wrongly began to believe that he had to first establish his own righteousness, in order to then receive God's blessings. He somehow lost sight of the fact that God's blessing of grace comes first. It is God's grace that brings about true repentance, imparts greater faith, reveals God's will, and enables us to do whatever God calls us to do in his name.
Job had seven sons and three daughters, who he would frequently sanctify, by offering burnt offerings to God on their behalf. He was very much focused on this particular religious ceremony of sacrifice, in order to cleanse away sin. Confessing sin that God's Spirit reveals in our heart is important, but we cannot forget that his cleansing of us is entirely based on his Son's sacrifice for us. We get ourselves into trouble when we start telling God, other people, and ourselves, that we are the ones who are sacrificing much for God. We can wrongly begin to think that our "doing" religious rituals and good works is what makes us righteous, instead of seeing that we are only declared to be righteous because of what God has done for us in Christ. Job's strong consciousness of sin is evident in his own words, for Job said, "It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. This is what Job always did." (Job 1:5). What is interesting is that it does not tell us of any intimate communion that Job practiced with God through prayer. It only tells us that Job practiced this ritual of burnt offering sacrifice. If Job did pray frequently, it is not mentioned, and that is odd because payer is so important to God.
We also do not hear anything about Job waiting on God, listening to him, and then faithfully obeying whatever God asked of him. Instead, the Bible only says that Job "always did" this religious ritual. It is strange that there is no mention of personal intimate relationship with the God who Job was trying so hard to satisfy and please. This strikes me as being like a picture of someone who goes to church frequently and performs all of the religious sacraments, but who does not spend time alone with God in the prayer closet. If they do, it's not something that is an important part of their life, and there's little or no talk of what God personally says to them. It is a form of godly "religion," but without God's power evidenced anywhere. This is what it appears to be what Job was practicing, based on what God has chosen to tell us about Job's worship activity and lack of any mention about his personal relationship with God. It is important to pay attention to what God shares with us in his Word, as well as what he does not say anything about. If God is not telling us anything about Job's personal relationship with him, it seems that such heart-to-heart intimacy was absent, at least to a significant degree.
Notice that "it may be" that his children had sinned. Do you see this over-emphasis on sin-consciousness? The Bible says that God has already declared Job to be righteous, because of his belief in God and his reverent fear of God that kept him turned away from sin. So why is Job trying to earn and pay for his right standing now, by putting so much emphasis on his own sacrifices to God? We can see in Job's words the ever-present fear of God's judgment of sin. He is seeing God as a judge, but a judge who must be counting every sin we commit. Job is a picture of a man who is constantly confessing sin, so that he does not fall out of right standing with God, and this is becoming a fear that is not necessarily a reverent holy fear, but a constant fear of judgment. At one point, he asks God, "How many are my iniquities and my sins?" (Job 13:23). At another point, Job says, "For I was in terror of calamity from God, and I could not have faced his majesty" (31:23). But the truth is that God is not standing in heaven with a notepad, keeping a record of all our sins, looking to condemn us whenever we fail him. We do fall down and sin from time to time, more often than we even consciously realize, but that does not mean that we fall in and out of right standing with our Father. That does not mean that we break our personal relationship with him, to the point where we have to go out and first perform a certain number of religious rituals out of obligation before he'll listen to us and like us again. That's what Satan wants us to believe but that's not true.
Job's frightening fear has gotten to the point where his relationship with God has become all about Job's sacrifices, not God's gift of righteousness based on belief and faith first. Sure, faithful obedience is part of our relationship with God, but that obedience is to be a fruit of his gift of salvation, not something we strive in our own efforts to make the root of our salvation. This foundation of right standing is what God wants to test about Job's faith, in order to show Job that he's beginning to stand on sinking sand. And notice that Job has no peace once he starts experiencing this testing through hardship. He says, "Truly the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest; but trouble comes" (Job 3:25-26). He can't sleep at night. Once this storm in life hits him, he has no "peace that passes all understanding" because there is something in him that's beginning to wonder if God is displeased with him. At first he resists that idea from his wife, but his friends show up and basically say, "Give it up Job. You must be hiding some sin that God sees, and now he is punishing you for that hidden sin."
Job 's faith begins to buckle under this pressure of accusation, and he begins to fall into that trap of self-condemnation that Satan tries to lure us into. Job now says, "See, he (God) will kill me; I have no hope; but I will defend my ways to his face. This will be my salvation" (13:15-16). Job is now bent on defending his own sense of self-righteousness to God, and he is trying to make his own sense of goodness and integrity the foundation of his salvation. He wants to defend himself to God, but God withdraws from us when we start trying to present our own self-righteousness to him. He does not want that kind of a "gift" from us. He does not want us boasting to ourselves of the sacrifices we are making for him. Instead, he wants us to boast to other people of the priceless sacrifice he has made to redeem us. As Job cries out God, God goes silent on him for awhile.
Job then speaks of his relationship with God, but he speaks only words of legalism. "I will say to God, Do not condemn me" (10:2). "If I sin, you watch me, and do not acquit me of my iniquity...If I am righteous, I cannot lift up my head, for I am filled with disgrace" (10:14-15). He asks, "how can a mortal be just before God?" (9:2). "I desire to argue my case with God...Hear now my reasoning...I have indeed prepared my case; I know that I shall be vindicated. Who is there that will contend with me?" (13:3,6,18-19). Job is thirsting after righteousness, or right standing with God, but he is trying to justify and defend himself. And this is where we see Job has actually put on a robe of self-righteousness, that is centered on his own sense of goodness and integrity. Little does he realize that he is simply glorifying himself, instead of glorifying God.
"When I went out to the gate of the city, when I took my seat in the square, the young men saw me and withdrew, and the aged rose up and stood; the nobles refrained from talking...the voices of princes were hushed...I put on righteousness and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe...I was a father to the needy, and I championed the cause of the stranger. I broke the fangs of the unrighteous...my glory was fresh with me...They listened to me and waited, and kept silence for my counsel. After I spoke they did not speak again...I chose their way, and sat as chief, and I lived like a king among his troops. (29:7-25).
God never intended for us to have this kind of relationship with him, where we are always trying to prove our goodness to him, and contending with him about how upright we are. It seems that Job has somehow gotten the idea that God is like us, and that God judges the way humans judge. He uses legalistic terms, such as "argue my case, hear now my reasoning, contend, vindicated, acquit, righteous, and condemn." These are terms that are based only on the law. There is not one shred of grace mentioned. Because he was a judge, he brought that same kind of worldly legalism into his relationship with God. As Job was suffering with hardship and afflictions, he was beginning to accuse God of being unfair and unjust to him. In accusing God like this, he was now actually putting God on trial.
At this point, we can now see that Job's human version of righteousness does not measure up to, or even compare with God's far greater righteousness. Talking about people who had respected him before his afflictions, but who now mock him, he says, "But now they make sport of me, those who are younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained...A senseless disreputable brood" (Job 30:1,8). He now believes that people have turned against him and are judging him. He fears that his honor and integrity are being destroyed. "Terrors are turned upon me; my honor is pursued as by the wind" (Job 30:15). Job sees only that other people were pursuing his honor, trying to trample it, but what he didn't see was that God was pursuing after Job's own false sense of honor. God wants us to pursue after his honor, not our own.
What is it that Job is contending with God about anyway? He is contending his own sense of righteousness, which he has been working hard to establish through his own efforts. But he is not seeing that his righteousness is actually a gift from God. And instead of thanking God for this gift, Job was defending his own sense of self-righteousness. That is what being overly sin-conscious and self-conscious does. It causes us to believe that we have to do things to please God first, so that he will then be pleased with us. Then if we suffer in hardship, we accuse God of not being fair with us, or not caring enough about our suffering. If we listen to Satan's lies, we can also begin to think that God is angry with us, and that he is punishing us for sins we have committed. In Job's case, these accusations came at him through his three friends.
Job is a picture of a person who comes to the cross, but forgets that the cross does more than serve to atone for our sins. It is also the place where we were crucified with Christ, and where the power of sin was broken when God condemned sin in the flesh. Unfortunately, many Christians receive the atonement part of salvation, are saved by God's grace, but then believe that they can walk the Christian life in the flesh from that point on, rather than walk in the Spirit by walking in faith and dependence on God. They try hard to please and honor God by initiating good works for God, but these good works are coming only from their natural abilities. Instead, God wants to live his supernatural life through us.
Job's hunger for righteousness is evident when he says, "my eyes pours out tears to God, that he (God) would maintain the right of a mortal with God" (16:21). He wants to be right with God, but Job's desire is something that he still thinks he has to first initiate in his own efforts. Because he sees God as mainly a judge, but doesn't see God's grace fully, he starts despairing to the point of wanting to give up, believing that God is out to condemn him. "I shall be condemned; why then do I labor in vain?...There is no umpire between us" (9:29-33). Job thinks he needs an umpire because he has locked himself into a state of contention with God over his own sense of integrity, goodness, and righteousness. He is busy defending himself before God, which means that he's trying to justify himself.
But the truth is that Job already was righteous in God's sight, not because he earned it, but because God declared him to be righteous. He was already right with God, loved by God, and accepted by God. In fact, God bragged about Job's integrity, which is something God does not do with too many people in the Bible. His Word says that Job "was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil" (1:1). God even goes further to say that "this man was the greatest of all the people of the east" (1:3).
Before God allowed him to be tested, Job had great material prosperity. He owned thousands of sheep, camels, donkeys, and oxen. He was a religious man, performing all the burnt offering sacrifices to make atonement for sin. And then one day, God summoned the heavenly beings to his throne, including Satan. Although God already knew where Satan had been, God asked Satan where he had come from. Satan said, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it" (1:7). This gives us a pretty good idea of how the devil spends his time.
Now notice how God goes out of his way to bring Job's faithfulness and integrity to Satan's attention, by saying, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil" (1:8). Immediately, Satan mocks this, and he demands the right to test Job's human strength and obedience to God.
Satan thinks this is only about God's blessings of material prosperity, and man's loyalty to God because of those blessings, so he says, "Of course he worships you. It's because you have a hedge of protection around him, and you bless the work of his hands. But take all that material prosperity away, stretch out your hand against him, and he will curse you." So God allows Satan to strike Job and separate him from his wealth. But Satan does not see that God is actually using him as an instrument, in order to test Job's faith, a faith that was not true faith because it was actually standing on the sinking ground of self-righteousness. Job's walking in the flesh of spiritual self-sufficiency is what God was looking to correct in Job. To do this, God would need to eventually reveal himself to Job. But first he needed Job to see that his idea of religion had become a religion of legalism, based on a merit system that God does not even offer us.
Satan left God's presence, thinking also that God had taken down the hedge around Job. But, in not allowing Satan to strike Job himself, it still sounds to me like God left a hedge up. God will never actually take down his hedge of protection from around his sons and daughters. In the hands of Jesus, whose name means "God is salvation," the enemy of our souls can do nothing to our souls.
Satan immediately went out from God's presence and caused the neighboring Sabeans and Chaldeans to swoop down on Job's herds, stealing all of his animals, and killing Job's servants. Then the walls of Job's oldest son's house collapsed on Job's children, causing them all to perish as well. We must remember that all people, including Job's family, belong to God their Creator. God gives life and he takes life, but either way, our life is in his hands, not in our hands. For example, my wife and kids do not belong to me. They are God's gifts to me, but they belong to God. He is their real Father. After striking Job's possessions and family, Satan returns to stand in God's presence. And once again, God brings Job's righteousness to Satan's attention. He tells Satan that Job "still persists in integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason" (1:3).
Do you see what God's focus remains on? His focus is on Job's blameless, upright, integrity. In other words, God's focus is on Job's righteousness. Our sense of righteousness is always the "heart of the matter," as far as God is concerned. Yes, it is good that Job "fears God and turns away from evil," but God is obviously more concerned about this: "Is Job beginning to put his faith in his own goodness, obedience, and faithfulness to me? Or, does Job still depend on my goodness to him, my ability to carry out my purposes, and my faithfulness to him?" God knows that Job is starting to stand in his own sense of goodness and righteousness. This is why God keeps emphasizing Job's goodness and righteousness to Satan.
God sees a problem in Job's heart, a problem that Job is not aware of, and a problem that Satan does not really see correctly. Satan thinks he sees it, and he's trying to fiercely attack it, but God has hidden the real root cause of Job's weakened state. The devil thinks it's all about material possessions, God's blessings, and the weakness of Job's flesh, but God is focused only on the weak pillar of self-righteousness that Job is trying to stand on. God is only focused on what Job is using to support his relationship with God on. Satan is just an instrument in God's hand, because he is merely a created being, who chose to rebel against God's righteousness. God wants to make sure of the same things with us today, as he wanted to make sure of with Job. He looks into our heart at the root of our salvation, because the root is what will hold us. Is God and his gift of righteousness still the root, or are we now trying to make our own human self-efforts our root?
Satan is not stupid or blind, as we should never assume that he is a toothless roaring lion. He knows what this whole battle is all about. He knows it all boils down to this thing called "righteousness," but he cannot do anything about God's gift of righteousness to us. So he attacks our flesh, and our false sense of strength in our flesh. In response to God's boasting of Job's persistent integrity, Satan says to God, "Skin for skin! All that people have, they will give to save their lives. But...touch his flesh...and he will curse you to your face" (Job 2:4-5). The only thing Job had left to depend on was his flesh. Self-righteousness is fueled by fleshly self-effort to be spiritually self-sufficient.
The flesh will do anything to save itself from suffering. It is bent on self-preservation. I am not talking about common sense self-preservation, such as looking both ways before crossing a street. The flesh is bent on self-preservation, meaning preservation of the self-centered life. The self-centered life wants to depend on fleshly human capacities and abilities to think and live. Misdirected pride in our own natural, human abilities is what convinces our flesh that it has the right to govern our soul. Instead, God wants our spirit, which he unites with Christ's Spirit when we are born again, to govern our soul.
God was about to deal with Job's fleshly self-righteousness, by allowing Satan to touch Job physically, thereby weakening Job in the flesh. There was a lot of fleshly defensiveness that Job had in his heart about his own sense of righteousness. You can see traces of it in Job's words, but it really becomes evident in Chapters 26 through 31. God was bringing Job to the end of himself, which he can do with believers who have started to walk in the strength and willpower of their own human flesh. God allowed this weakening of Job's flesh to prove to Satan that, although he is right about human beings' weakness in the flesh, he is not right about God's ability to perfect his strength through us...despite our own human weaknesses. God also wanted to reveal and prove to Job the weakness of his own flesh. God was doing this weakening of Job's flesh, so that he could point Job away from his self-efforts and self-righteousness, to God's efforts to make Job righteous instead. After Satan inflected Job with boils or rashes, to the point where his own friends didn't even recognize him, Job began to do what we do when we see how weak our flesh is.
Backed into that kind of corner, Job started defending himself...with his own righteousness. He began to "present his case" to God, and telling God that God was not being fair to him. He was accusing God of not being just, which is another word for righteous. In doing so, Job was actually condemning God, because the opposite of righteousness is condemnation. On top of condemning God, Job was also falling deep into self-condemnation. He began talking in a way that all of his sin-consciousness and self-consciousness became clearly evident. He had putting himself under the law of legalism. And that is precisely when his friends started accusing him of hidden sin. Satan does that with us today too. He knows his rights, so he begins accusing us the minute we start focusing on the law, our ability to obey the law. He tries to lure us into the trap of self-condemnation as soon as we start using defensive attempts to justify our sin.
From chapter 3 through chapter 31, Job's three friends go back and forth with him, accusing him of hidden sin against God, and even calling him a hypocrite. His friends see that there is sin in Job, but they have a misunderstanding of what sin is...in God's sight. They are on the right track, but on the wrong path. God is focusing on the sin of unrighteousness in self-effort, otherwise known as self-righteousness. He wants to keep Job cleansed of all unrighteousness. God is looking at Job's heart, where his faith in righteousness is. Based on many things that Job says, especially in Chapter 31, we can see that Job has veered away from faith in God's undeserved gift of righteousness to him, and onto a path of self-righteousness instead.
After 29 chapters of back-and-forth theological debate, between Job and his three friends, God sends a young man named Elihu into the conversation. This is where God gets to the crux of the matter, through this "messenger" that he has sent to Job. As far as the other men involved, they "ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own sight" (Job 32:1). Elihu says that it is "the spirit in a mortal, the breath of the Almighty, that makes for understanding" (32:8). He says, "I am full of words; the spirit within me constrains me" (32:18). He also acknowledges that "the Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life" (33:4). He tells Job, "before God I am as you are; I too was formed from a piece of clay" (33:6). Then Elihu, as messenger sent from God, says to Job, "You say, 'I am clean, without transgression; I am pure but there is no iniquity in me"...but in this you are not right...God is greater than any mortal...God speaks in one way, and in two, though people do not perceive it" (Job 33:9,12). After this, Elihu begins to prophesy about the Mediator that Job had asked for in earlier chapters.
Job 33:21-33 "Their flesh is so wasted away...Then, if there should be...a mediator...one hos declares a person upright, and he is gracious to that person...Then he prays to God, and it is accepted by him, he comes into the presence with joy, and God repays him for his righteousness...I sinned...and it was not repaid to me. He has redeemed me...God indeed has done all these things...Pay heed, Job, listen to me; be silent...speak, for I desire to justify you...be silent, and I will teach you."
Elihu is a young man, who has humbled himself before these three other wise, older friends of Job. He has kept his "peace," but now he speaks with godly authority above them. Elihu spoke, because he saw that Job "justified himself rather than God" (32:2). This was God's focus on Job's heart too. God says that "all" Scripture "is" inspired by him, to teach us and correct us. In other words, this is for us today. Elihu is God's messenger to us, just as he was God's messenger to Job then. In other words, God is talking to us now, through is word, and he wants us to put ourselves in Job's shoes.
Now, you may be saying, "I don't get it. Job was blameless and upright in God's sight, so much so that God was even bragging to the devil about him. I don't see too many places in the Bible where God brags about a human being. Even after Job was struck by Satan in the first round of attacks, God told Satan that Job was still persisting in his integrity. Job's wife asked him why he was still persisting in his integrity too. So why is Job's righteousness the big issue with God here?" Because God saw self-righteousness in Job's heart. Satan saw something different. He only saw that Job was prospering because God was blessing him. He also only saw that if God took away his protection and hand of blessing, Job's flesh would suffer to the point where he would give up on God.
But God was not as concerned about that, as he was concerned about Job's own efforts to make himself good enough and religious enough before God. He was also concerned about Job's image of God as a judge who punishes sin by inflicting calamities on the sinner. Many people in Job's day believed that God operated this way. If a person was seen suffering, it must be because God was angry with them. In the same way, if a woman was unable to bear children, it must be because God was punishing her for sin. Or, maybe God was punishing a person because their parents or grandparents sinned. He was concerned that Job was beginning to see himself as righteous before God only if he made every effort to avoid sin, and made frequent sacrificial atonement for sin that he may have committed.
Job was "blameless, upright, a man who persisted in integrity, and who feared God and turned away from evil." He was a righteous man in his own eyes, but his righteousness was starting to become something that God does not accept. So where was the self-righteousness in him? It was hidden in his heart, yet he did not even see it. Satan didn't seem to be able to identify it either. God knows us better than we know ourselves though. He saw in Job what Job could not even see in his own heart. And in Chapter 31, all of Job's self-righteousness finally came pouring out of him in an outburst that reads like a long list of good works. God is patient with us, because it usually takes a long time for us to come to end of ourselves.
The only thing that was outwardly visible for us to see before this was Job's obsession with sin. There is a purpose in everything God chooses to tell us about. He gives us fragmentary information sometimes, but he tells us the other small details that are more vital for us to see. He would not be highlighting Job's continual sacrifices, and fear of sin in his children, if it was not important for us to see. The question we should ask ourselves is, "Who is it that tries to make us sin-conscious all the time? Is God, or is it Satan, whose name means "the Accuser"? And then, I need to ask myself, "Who is that wants to make me conscious of the fact that my righteousness is an undeserved gift from God, based only on faith that rests in Christ's faithfulness to me?" It is certainly not the devil.
Although Job revealed a lot of self-righteousness, which was hidden in Job's heart in earlier chapters, look at how much of it finally came out in this one chapter:
Job 31:1-40 "I have made a covenant with my eyes...Does he not see my ways? Let me be weighed in a just balance, and let God know my integrity!" Notice that Job's "covenant" is with his eyes, not with God. This is a picture of a person who says to God, "Look at how I live, and judge me based on my own performance and integrity, rather than according to your undeserved, unearned grace." Job goes on to explain that he has always been faithful to his wife, has always treated his servants fairly, has always helped the poor, the widows, and the orphans. He says that he has not put his trust in his money, and has not rejoiced over his wealth. He has not worshiped anything other than God.
Job says, "I have not rejoiced at the ruin of those who hated me," and has not cursed his enemies. He has not hid any sins, and says of God, "I would give him an account of all my steps." He says that has eaten only what he has planted and harvested, and has not taken provisions from others wrongfully. And it is after all of his proclaimed self-righteousness that God's messenger, Elihu, steps in to prophesy to Job and his other friends about the One who was to come...the Mediator and gracious Redeemer...Jesus Christ.
The Mediator is the One "who declares a person upright, and he is gracious to that person" (33:23-24). Then Elihu, full of God's Spirit, says, ."I have something to say on God's behalf. I will bring my knowledge from far away, and ascribe righteousness to my Maker" (36:2). He also says, "Pay heed, Job, listen to me; be silent and I will speak...for I desire to justify you...be silent, and I will teach you wisdom" (33:31-33). Sometimes, God's will is for us to just shut up, so that he can declare us righteous in his gift of righteousness to us. In other words, he shares his righteousness, or his glory, with us...so that we can have a relationship with him who is perfectly holy. It is all about God's grace, never about our own efforts to please him. It is all about his unmerited gracious plans for us, never about our plans to please him.
Job's three friends were Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. In the end, God brought them to the end of their theological arguments, accusations over sin, and wrong teaching about him. God brought Job to the end of his arguments, issues, and controversies with God. He also caused Job, through his suffering, to reveal his own false sense of self-righteousness and goodness. God has a higher purpose through our circumstances, even when they involve extreme, apparent suffering of our flesh. After God allowed Job and his friends to exhaust themselves, he finally spoke through his forerunner, Eliphaz. Through this humble, young man, God spoke. Through the humble form of Jesus, God spoke. He chooses the weak to shame the strong, and he chooses the foolish to shame the wise. That is what he did here too. To these three older, wiser friends of Job, God spoke through Elihu:
Job 32:6-13 Elihu...answered, "I am young in years, and you are aged; therefore I was timid and afraid to to declare my opinion to you. I said, 'Let days speak, and many years teach wisdom. But truly it is the spirit in a mortal, the breath of the Almighty, that makes for understanding. It is not the old that are wise, nor the aged that understand what is right. Therefore I say, 'Listen to me...you searched out what to say...but there was in fact no one that confuted Job, no one among you that answered his words...God may vanquish him, not a human."
Elihu was saying that no human being has the right to condemn (vanquish) another human being for sin. He also said that, in all of their theology, they did not provide any answer to Job that had healing and life in it. Healing is what Job needed. He also needed life, because he reached a point where he was despairing of life itself. There was no power in all of their doctrine and theology, because God himself was not speaking through any of them. God only spoke through his messenger, Elihu. And right after Elihu spoke, God the Father spoke. He spoke out of a whirlwind. He spoke his words of sovereign control, through a whirlwind of apparent chaos.
God spoke words of healing to Job, right through Job's suffering. He spoke words to Job that basically said, "Your life is not over, as you think it is. Your life is actually just beginning." Job was 70 years old. God added 140 more years to his life. He restored Job, in every area of his life, with twice as much as Job had before. Did God answer any of Job's questions? No, he gave not one single answer to any of Job's arguments, issues, and controversies with him...and yet he opened Job's eyes in a way that they had never been opened before.
God opened Job's eyes to God's righteousness. He said not one single word about sin, or about any laws that God had. He spoke nothing but undeserved grace to Job, basically reminding Job that he had everything under control...including Job's life. Did Job deserve any of this blessing of restoration that he received from God? No, he did not, because he had done nothing to earn it. And what brought about Job's true repentance from dead works and self-righteousness? God's grace to Job. God did not tell Job to go out and buy the latest book about the 7 or 8 steps he would need to perform, in order to make himself become a better Christian.
In the end, Job repented. But Job did not repent of some hidden sin that he was being accused of by his friends. Job repented from his dead works and self-righteousness. And what did God then tell Job to do? He told Job to pray for his three accusers. But even so, God called them Job's "friends"...Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. God did not tell Job to pray for Elihu, because God's anointing was already on Elihu. The other three friends needed prayer though, because someone had to pray that their eyes be opened too. They still had that veil of legalism and sin-consciousness, that causes self-consciousness...rather than enlightened true righteousness and God-consciousness. Job's three friends were believers, but they were not filled with the Spirit of God, as Elihu was. They had some knowledge about the Spirit of God, but they were not being fueled by his presence. That is why their words had no power to help Job. They were speaking human words, not the actual overflowing words of God.
In the end, Job admitted, "I had only heard about you, but now I have seen you with my own eyes" (Job 42:5). Only God can open up our eyes, but he will only enlighten us if we are submitting ourselves to live under his grace, not under our own efforts to establish our own righteousness. God does not want our sacrifices as much as he wants our heart. He is our one and only sacrifice for our sin. The power to live for God begins by confessing with our mouth that we are the righteousness of God, through faith in Christ. Once Job saw that his righteousness was a gift from God, and that he was always right with God, then God could lead him.
Once Job saw that he did not have to be overly obsessed with sin, to the point where he lost sight of what true righteousness was, then God could bless him in greater ways. Christianity begins at the cross of God's gracious love for us. And that same love is what we must allow God to control us with. Above anything else, stay in his embrace. We don't hold onto our salvation, as though it is something that can slip from our fingers. Salvation holds us in his hands. The name "Jesus" means "God is salvation." But always remember that his full name is the "Lord" Jesus Christ. We are commanded to give him his rightful place in every area of our life...for our own good.
There is one last thing to notice. We do not hear one more peep out Satan after Job 2:7. God used him as an instrument to subtract things from Job, and to weaken Job's fleshly self-efforts, all for the purpose of bringing Job to a point where he would finally belch out all of his self-righteousness in Chapter 31. At that point of utter weakness, Job basically said, "God, what more do I have to do to please you? I have done this good thing, that religious thing, and this other thing over here to help others, just as you say to do. I have made all the sacrifices for you. I have nothing else left to give you." When we come to end of ourselves, and say those words to God, it is music to his ears...and it is the most powerful place to be at in the whole universe.
Satan expects us to curse God at that point. "Skin for skin!" he says, "All that people have they will give to save their lives." When God heard Satan say this, I think he had to hold himself back from laughing because there is actually great truth to that statement, although not in the way Satan sees it. It is very telling that God did not correct him, because doing so might have alerted Satan to what God wanted to do with Job. God's wisdom may seem backwards and counter-intuitive to us, but he has a very effective way of turning the tables on the devil all the time. What Satan means for evil, God is able to turn into good. Yes Satan, you are always just one step away from the truth. The truth is that, "All that people have MUST be given to save their lives." God in Christ gave us everything he had to save our lives. And he calls us to do the same.
Matthew 16:24-26 Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any of you want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?"
We die to the self-centered life of self-dependency, self-sufficiency, self-ambition, self-gratification, and self-security, so that we be used of God to bear witness to a life that need never die. "For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you" (2 Corinthians 4:11-12).
2 Corinthians 4:7 But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us."
God wants us to be transparent vessels, broken of the outer man shell of fleshly efforts, human viewpoints, and plans that we originate. All of our natural flesh gets in the way of his out-flowing Spirit within us. We become stumbling blocks to him, so much so that another person's spirit cannot sense his Spirit from within us. We are fragile clay jars, full of cracks that do leak, but immersed in Christ's Spirit, the Living Water, our cracks and leaks are irrelevant. He flows in us so that he can flow out of us to others around us. We are supposed to leak...a lot.
If you are suffering through hardship, or are struggling with something that you think is very unfair, remember the "real lesson" in Job's story. Make sure you are standing on the right foundation with God, the undeserved gift of his righteousness to you.
Philippians 3:7- Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith...I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own."
Satan has been disarmed, and God has taken away his legal grounds to demand our condemnation because of our sins. God did this by replacing the Old Covenant ministry of condemnation under the law with his New Covenant ministry of grace in his Spirit through faith. "God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it. Therefore do not let anyone condemn you...Do not let anyone disqualify you." (Colossians 2:13-16,18).
Don't rearm Satan by putting the law back in his hands. This can only happen to the Christian person when they drift back under the Old Covenant merit system. Satan knows his right to appear before God and attack us when we are standing in self-righteousness, as we saw with Job, and God will allow him to attack us so that we step out of that sinking sand. The only Rock that can keep us standing in God's grace is this Rock:
2 Corinthians 5:21 "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God"
Our own sense of goodness does not matter to God, and it will not get us to heaven. Only faith in "him who knew no sin" will get us there. Without faith in him, we have no way of being made right with God. He is our righteousness, and only by walking in his Spirit can we bear the fruit of obedience that honors God. Job was a good man, but not good enough because he was trying too hard to be good. He was very religious, and he was a perfect performer, but God broke his grip on all that. Job had the wrong robe of covering on. That's what matters most to God. It took awhile to get Job to take that robe off. It was a painful experience for him too. Sometimes, Jesus has to fashion a whip out of cords, in order to drive self-righteousness out of his temple, which is our heart. And even after he has done that, self-righteousness tries to worm its way back in. That's why he had to return to his temple and do it again later.
When God finally did appear to Job, he spoke to Job from a whirlwind. In what appears to be chaos, God speaks to us about the fact that he has everything under his control. He reminds us that he is sovereign over everything, including our circumstances that seem to be out of control. When we are in a storm of hardship and suffering, it is easy for us to blame God and tell him that he is being unfair to us, without looking in the mirror to see what kind of robe we are actually wearing.
It is easy for us to lash out at God and accuse him of not seeing or caring about what we are going through. God could condemn us for doing this to him, but he doesn't. He is not so quick to judge and pay back, as Job was, and as we are. Out of that whirlwind of confusion and fear, God will ask us, as he asked Job, "Will you condemn me that you may be justified?" (Job 40:8). This is what finally brought Job to his knees of repentance from dead works. He saw now that God is the hardest worker in the universe, and that all of his work is for our benefit...so that we can be made right with him. In the dust, God could now pick Job up and set him on a real Rock. On Christ the solid Rock we stand. All other ground is really just sinking sand.
Job 42:10,12 "And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends, and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before...The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning..."
With God, there's always an "in the end." It really does eventually get to a point where it is utterly irrational not to trust him with every single area of our life. Just think what the Creator of the Universe can do through a life that is fully surrendered to him?
