Audio Transcript

It’s Job week on the podcast. The book of Job is a source of a lot of APJ questions, and the source of a lot of answers too on all sorts of topics over the years. We have eighty episodes now mentioning Job — on every topic you can imagine. I’m surprised how often we return to this important book, which is not easy to interpret. We’re reading the book together in our Bible reading. Today we read Job 16 together.

The whole book is challenging to interpret because it’s littered with errors, Pastor John — errors about suffering, errors about providence, and even false statements about God himself, a distortion on full display for us here in our reading today, in the early verses of chapter 16. There we find a mix of things that are true and things certainly false, most starkly in Job 16:7–9. Verse 7 is sovereignly true. God brought the suffering into Job’s life by his plan and permission. Yes. But then verse 9 seems devilishly false. God did not bring the suffering because he hates Job. So, how do we parse fact from fiction as we read Job’s words, along with his wife and all of his friends, trying to interpret providence?

Well, that is the right question to ask, I think, because perhaps the most striking thing about the structure of the book of Job is that from chapters 3 to 31 you have 29 chapters of back-and-forth between Job and his three so-called comforters or friends, both of them speaking a mixture of truth and falsehood. It’s simply stunning to me that the author would devote 29 out of 42 chapters to a jumble of good and bad statements about human suffering and God’s sovereignty. The author seems to be especially exercised that there is so much bad theology about the sovereignty of God and human suffering. That, it seems, is why he gives 29 chapters to it.

The Errors of Job and His Friends

We can summarize the simplistic theology of suffering and sovereignty in the mouth of the three friends with Job 4:7–8. They say, “Who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.” In other words, their answer to Job’s extended suffering is that it is owing to his iniquity. The righteous prosper; the wicked suffer. In chapter after chapter, they accuse Job of all kinds of sin, from bribery to deceit to neglect of the poor. And for Job’s part, he despairs of being treated justly by God and says repeatedly, at least three times, that God is treating him as an enemy (Job 13:24, for example) and that God, in fact, hates him (Job 16:9).

“We don’t know enough about God’s hidden ways and plans to pass any valid negative judgment about his ways.”

Now, what they all agree on is that God is absolutely sovereign. That’s amazing. They never question that. We moderns, we’re bold and brash enough to get in God’s face and say that he’s not sovereign. That’s never once questioned by anybody in the book of Job. What they are struggling with is why a person like Job is enduring such long and terrible suffering. The friends’ answer is, “His suffering correlates with his sin.” Job’s answer is, “I don’t understand what’s going on, but all I can tell is that God is treating me as though he hated me.”

A Grid for the Book of Job

I think the way the author intends for us to sort out what is true and what is false in what Job and his friends say in these 29 chapters is by letting the rest of the book — what came before in chapters 1–2, and what comes after in chapters 32–42 — let all of that provide the grid, the framework, the criteria for separating truth and error in Job 3–31.

So, let me try to sketch very briefly what that grid is.

1. Job’s Goodness

The point of chapters 1–2 is that Job was a good man, a God-fearing man: “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). He proved that profoundly with his godly response, blessing God, worshiping God (Job 1:20–21). In the midst of the loss of his children, the loss of his health, he submitted to the sovereign wisdom, justice, and goodness of God, even though he couldn’t see it all. In Job 2:10, he says, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” And the inspired author puts his approval on those words: “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”

The fact that we are given a glimpse into heaven as Satan and God interact about the life of Job, which Job could not see, is intended to show that on earth, we don’t know enough about God’s hidden ways, his hidden plans, to pass any valid negative judgment about his ways. So, we have a signal from the author from the beginning that Job’s three friends are not right. They are treating Job as if there’s sin everywhere in his life, which explains his suffering. And the point of chapters 1–2 is that that’s not true. There must be another explanation. But for Job, for 31 chapters, he can’t figure that out.

2. Elihu’s Explanation

So, the next big unit is Elihu, the young man who steps forward, who I believe is speaking the truth in order to correct both Job and his friends. Here’s Job 32:2–3: “Elihu . . . burned with anger at Job because he justified himself rather than God. He burned with anger also at Job’s three friends because they had found no answer, although they had declared Job to be in the wrong.”

“Suffering, in the case of God’s children, is a gracious means by which he exposes pride in our lives.”

What’s new about Elihu’s theology of suffering is that he does not correlate suffering merely with a punitive act of God against Job, but he introduces this new factor in Job 33:14–19 that suffering, in the case of God’s children, is a gracious means by which he exposes the sediment of pride at the bottom of our lives, lying there undetected, and then you get bumped by suffering, and the sediment stirs up. He exposes that and mercifully leads us to repentance and trust. That’s what’s going to happen to Job.

Now, I don’t think that contradicts the statement at the beginning of the book of Job — that Job was a good and God-fearing man. But it clarifies that in the best of men, whom God regards as good and God-fearing, there are remnants of indwelling sin. And one way that God in his mercy cleanses us and humbles us and brings us to fuller, deeper repentance and deeper trust is through suffering. He tests us to see if we will hold fast to him in love.

3. God’s Response

Then the next major unit in the book is the word of God himself in chapters 38–41. And the basic message there is, “Job, you just don’t know enough to pass judgment on me. You need to put away your accusations and trust me. You darken counsel without knowledge” (see Job 38:2).

4. Job’s Repentance

The final part of the book is Job’s confession of God’s sovereignty and his own repentance for having spoken so badly about God. Job 42:5–6: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” So, the Lord tests Job one last time now to see if he has the new, fresh grace to pray for the forgiveness of his three friends who wounded him so badly. Job 42:10: “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends.”

So, I think the author intends for us to step back and see the God-fearing goodness of Job at the beginning, and the refining of Job’s holiness and faith through suffering, and his rejection of the simplistic view of the three friends, and his repentance for having found fault with God, and the beauty of his humility and love at the end. And the author expects us to take all of that as the grid through which we now will be able to sort out what is true and what is false in the mouth of Job and his friends in chapters 3–31.

Audio Transcript

On Thursday, we looked at perfectionism through the eyes of a high school student. When are good grades good enough? Great question. Today, we’re back to the topic of perfectionism and how it makes us indecisive in our later years. How do we overcome the paralysis of perfectionistic indecision in important life decisions? That’s the challenge faced by two retirees, Elisa and her husband, a couple with a historical connection to you, Pastor John. Elisa writes with a story and a dilemma.

“Hello, Pastor John! Thanks for your ministry over all these years. Incidentally, we [she and her husband] met you as post-Stanford students attending InterVarsity’s Western Leadership Conference, sometime around 1985. I was one of the worship leaders at that conference and vividly remember you speaking on Christian Hedonism — a life-changing paradigm for us. Now that we’re empty nesters, my husband and I are asking the question, ‘How do we spend the next portion of our lives?’ However, for better or worse, my dear husband is something of a perfectionist and doesn’t want to make a mistake in answering this important question. So, the question becomes, ‘When the stakes are so high, how do you not become paralyzed with fear of making a mistake?’”

I have to ask, Why? How can you be a perfectionist as an empty nester? How can you live that long and still be a perfectionist? Well, anyway, he is. So, we get to deal with this.

Elisa, this is wonderful to be reminded of those days at Stanford. I remember them. And I remember them pretty clearly for reasons that are not altogether positive, because I remember that the leader of the InterVarsity group and I were moving in different directions, it seemed. I’m going to close with that in just a few minutes and apply that to your situation.

So, here are the things that come to my mind. And I’m in exactly your situation. You’re younger than I am, but I’m thinking about that question. Here are my thoughts.

1. Realize that to not decide is to disobey.

One of the best ways to overcome the perfectionistic fear of making a mistake in what you decide to do is to realize that deciding nothing is the biggest mistake. There’s your deal-breaker. That’ll get you going. In other words, you are not in a neutral zone. There are no neutral zones. Not to move toward a God-sized goal in this next season of your life is to disobey. So, standing still is not an option, because it means you’re drifting. You’re never standing still — you’re drifting and you’re coasting with the culture and the way of the world. That’s the first thing.

2. Expect God to steer you as you move.

If you’re tied up in the harbor of comfort and leisure, God ordinarily will not give you clear direction. He gives direction to captains who point their ship out of the harbor into the storm. Think about Jonah (a counterintuitive illustration). Even Jonah was moving in exactly the wrong direction, and God stopped him. He didn’t send him home and say, “Start over!” No, he didn’t send him home. He made that journey part of the journey. And he sent him exactly where he wanted him to be — not exactly in the way he wanted, but he got him where he wanted to go because he was moving.

3. Get started through investigative moving.

One of the ways to be moving without knowing exactly where you’re going is what I might call investigative moving. You are moving when you are pursuing possibilities with serious investigation. That too is moving.

4. Trust God’s promise to guide you.

Take heart from the many promises of God that, in his great mercy, he will give you the guidance you need when you trust him. For example, Psalm 25:8: “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.” So, we qualify. He instructs sinners in the way. “He leads the humble” — people who know that they’re sinners and admit it and cry out. “He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way” (Psalm 25:9). That is a precious promise of guidance.

5. Obey clear commands in God’s word.

Pursue with all your might what is crystal clear as God’s will in Scripture. For example, 1 Thessalonians 4:3: “This is the will of God [for Elisa and her husband], your sanctification” — your holiness. If you have a full, deep, wide, rich understanding of holiness, it’s not bad advice to say, “Pursue holiness with all your might, and do as you please. Just do.” Because if you are passionate about being holy and maximizing your love of God, then it’ll happen. God loves to give fruitful direction to lovers of holiness who pursue it with all their hearts.

6. Dream bigger than aging fatalism.

In this process of prayer and investigation, dream bigger than aging fatalism would allow you. I find in my own heart at age seventy the temptation to think, “I don’t have long to live. So, I should be probably restricted in my dreams of what I can accomplish.” Now, I think that’s a mistake. I think it’s a serious mistake. And I’m trying to strive against that thought. I have no idea how long I have left. You don’t either.

“God loves to give fruitful direction to lovers of holiness who pursue it with all their hearts.”

I never have had any idea how long I have left. But when I was younger, I assumed that I could accomplish more simply because of the amount of time that was in front of me probably. But in fact, the accomplishments came because of God’s blessing on a particular season. It wasn’t the length of life; it was the power of seasons. And who knows what you might accomplish in the next season? So, don’t let the fatalism of aging limit your dreams of fruitfulness.

7. Ask how you will get the most of God himself.

And the last thing relates to Stanford, 1985. One of the reasons I look back with some sadness on those Christian Hedonism talks is because, little by little, as the series of messages went on, I saw myself — through interacting with students and the leader — going in a different direction than the InterVarsity leader at the time. His stress was on the wonder and the glory of the fact that God works for us. We are not God’s employees trying to earn wages. We are the patients of the Great Physician, who is using all his wisdom and his skill to serve us and our eternal health. And that’s true, and I love it.

But the note I was striking then (and have been ever since) was that when God works for us, the goal of his work is to fit us for enjoying God himself. That’s what the Physician does — not like any earthly physician. This heavenly Physician is trying to get our disease healed that makes us find substitutes for God so that in our wellness, we will see him, know him, love him, be satisfied in him. God himself is the all-satisfying treasure. And as I recall, the students back then began to discern a different trajectory between me and the leader.

So, here’s the way it relates to you. In your case now, the question, perhaps, finally is this: What new vision for our next chapter of life would cause us to taste most fully the power of God, the wisdom of God, the grace of God in our lives? How can we get more of God? And I think that if that’s the passion, God will show you the answer.