Thread by @JamesBejon

THREAD: Things are quite tough for me at the moment, as they are for a number of friends of mine.

I thought a Tweet-walk through the book of Job might, therefore, prove helpful.

And, as it happens, @TGC’s Bible Plan has just reached Job.

#TwitCom

thegospelcoalition.org/article/read-b…

So please join me if you feel inclined.

Now, Job is a long book.

Even a fairly brisk walk through it could, therefore, take some time.

But the book of Job is not long without reason.

It is long because the question it asks do not have quick and easy answers.

It is long because the issues it raises take time to think through (as well as to live through).

And it is long because people who have suffered in the same kind of way as Job do not recover from it overnight.

As such, the wisdom of Job cannot easily be distilled (as if a slug of Job and a dash of prayer can solve life’s difficulties in an instant).

The book of Job is a journey, and is one which moves at a fairly slow pace.

But it does provide answers in the end.

It just provides them in God’s good time and in God’s chosen manner.

So, with these thoughts in mind, let’s dive in.

The book of Job opens with a wager between God and Satan.

‘Does Job worship God for naught?’, Satan asks.

The implied answer is ‘No’. (Satan is ‘the accuser’ after all.)

Job worships God not because of who God is, Satan says, but because of what he gets out of it.

The significance of Satan’s accusation is not always appreciated.

Some commentators suggest God engages with Satan simply out of deference to his concerns.

What is at stake, however, is not the concerns of Satan, but the character of God and his people.

Satan’s accusation calls two specific things into question.

First, Job’s integrity.

Job is not a true worshipper of God, Satan says.

His devotion is merely a matter of convenience.

Yet, once Job has been stripped of his possessions, the superficiality of his piety will become evident, and Job will curse God to his face.

The second (and more important) thing Satan calls into question is God’s glory.

Satan implies God has to buy his worship.

God cannot win the affections of his people by virtue of his intrinsic glory, Satan says;

he has to coax it from his people by means of bribery, i.e., with a form of ‘prosperity Gospel’.

Such, then, are Satan’s accusations.

And, remarkably, in order to refute them, God takes Satan up on his wager.

As a result, Job is afflicted by a whole array of disasters...

...which lead him to experience more pain in the course of a few days than many people experience in the course of a lifetime.

First the Sabeans ‘fall’ on Job’s cattle (1.15);

then fire ‘falls’ from heaven (1.16);

next Job’s house ‘falls’ on his children (1.19);

and, in response, Job himself ‘falls’ to the ground (1.20).

And yet, incredibly, he does so in worship to his Maker.

Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, he says,

and naked I will return there.

The LORD has given,

and the LORD has taken away.

Blessed be the name of the LORD.

Suffice it to say, these are hardly the words of a man who holds to a prosperity Gospel.

Satan, however, is not so easily defeated.

In his next assault on Job, he provokes Job’s wife to tempt Job to sin (2.9)—a tactic which worked well for him in the garden of Eden.

Unlike Adam, however, Job stands his ground,

which, happily, marks the end of Satan’s (direct) interaction with him.

As such, Satan loses his wager. And, praise be to God, we never hear from him again in the book of Job.

But, like the dragon-esque beast of ch. 41 which leaves troubled waters in its wake (41.32), Satan leaves devastation in his wake.

And so, at the end of ch. 2, we find Job physically and emotionally broken, amidst the ashes on the plain of Uz,

where he and his friends must pick up the pieces of his life and make sense of the disasters which have recently befallen him.

The friends’ first course of action is simply to sit with Job in silence for seven long days and nights (2.13),

which is often seen as the best thing they do.

But, while the silence of Job’s friends was well motivated (2.13), I am not personally convinced it was so helpful.

Should it really have been left to *Job* of all people—a man who had just been robbed of his health, wealth, sons, and daughters—to break the silence?

Wouldn’t it have been better for Job’s friends to assure him they were on his side and encourage him in the Lord?

Long before Bildad and Zophar say a word in the debate, Job knows he cannot count on their support (cp. the plural forms in 6.21ff.).

Job therefore seems to have viewed his friends’ silence as the kind of silence which awaits a confession of sin rather than seeks to comfort.

Either way, it did little to help Job’s state of mind.

That is not, of course, to suggest it is undesirable to sit and listen to a friend in need.

But Job’s friends do not listen; they simply sit.

They may even have spoken to *one* *another* (and speculated about Job’s condition).

We are only told they didn’t speak ‘to Job’ (2.12).

And their actions are described in a subtly negative manner. ‘Job had no-one to speak to him’ (אין דֹּבֵר אליו), we are told, as if to suggest Job *needed* someone to speak to him, yet no-one was prepared to do so.

At any rate, with the advent of ch. 3, the debate between Job and his friends begins,...

...which is where we’ll pick things up next time.

Before we do, however, a brief reflection to close.

When we worship God amidst the ashes in life, it is of great value to him.

It shows the sincerity of our worship in a manner which is otherwise not possible, and which not even Satan can detract from.

Indeed, it passes the very test of sincerity Satan devised.

THE END.