Job 22-31

As Job and his friends seek wisdom and understanding, we realize that the Gospel is what is able to create right feeling, thinking and acting toward God, others and the world in the context of suffering.

Good morning! We’re in Job 22-31 this week.

Although primarily poetic dialogue, the book of Job has a narrative prose structure, which means it has a story arc with a plot, a setting with characters, a conflict, a climax and a resolution. A good story draws us into their struggle and dialogue as if we are observers ourselves. Chapters 22-31 rise in conflict and end at a tension point, but there is a poetic interlude in chapter 28 that I would like to read from to engage our imaginations this morning. I believe it captures a primary theme of Job: seeking wisdom. And that is what I’d like to propose to you: that the dialogue between Job and his friends is not merely poetic posturing or argument about justice, but about seeking and refining wisdom through dialogue like someone seeking and refining gold, which we ourselves can join in pursuit of as we engage with the Word.

Prayer: Father, thank you for You. In Your perfect wisdom you have made the world, made us, and made the plan of salvation, the gospel, for perfect relationship with you. And in your great wisdom, you use suffering to produce in us the character that prepares us for more intimate relationship with you. Holy Spirit please lead us to wisdom as we study these chapters. In Jesus’ name.

What is wisdom? I would like to define wisdom as ‘the right way to think, feel and act toward God, the world and others.’

And this is what Job and his friends are seeking in the context of Job’s suffering. Like searching out the farthest recesses in the blackest darkness, ’assaulting the flinty rock’ of human suffering and God’s justice with words and reason for the ore of wisdom, refining each person’s thoughts through the honest examination and testing of ideas together.

Job 12:11: Job: “Does not the ear test words as the tongue tastes food?”

Job 34:3: Elihu: “For the ear tests words as the tongue tastes food. Let us discern for ourselves what is right; let us learn together what is good.”The richest areas to mine gold in the ancient world were in Egypt, in the mountains between the Nile and the Red Sea. The gold-refining process was so developed in Egypt that ancient wall reliefs depict the process, which includes raw mined ore or collected material being crushed into a powder, mixed with other material and when exposed to heat, helped to separate impurities.

Likewise, suffering has the potential to expose previously hidden feelings and thoughts for processing and refinement. In a culture that values therapeutic support, we may jump to frame the exchanges between Job and his friends as insensitive and unhelpful; and what Job really needed was empathy. Attunement, and sensitivity, is helpful. But after the shock of loss has passed, the need to make meaning and purpose of our suffering remains, and this is where Job is at in these chapters—he is looking for answers, the right way to interpret his situation, the right way to think, feel act toward God, the world and others.

Let’s dive in to some of the exchanges:

Chapter 21: Jumping back one chapter, we find that Job is appalled and terrified at the prospect that God does not judge the wicked in their lifetime, and is pushing back on his friends’ claims of that is how God always works.

Chapter 22: Eliphaz takes Job’s point and reflects that God doesn’t owe anyone anything just because they do good things, and begins to nail down Job’s suffering as judgment in light of personal sin, because that is God’s overall pattern, especially considering the flood.

Eliphaz gives Job his cure, which sounds good: turn back to God, treasure his words, and he will bless you. Some translations have Eliphaz saying ‘if you lay your gold in the dust’ and others have ‘God will lay gold upon you like the dust,’ when you turn back and obey Him. Either way, repentance does not apply to Job in his mind.

Chapter 23: Job wishes he could to argue his innocence to God directly. He has treasured his words and followed his ways. Despite feeling scared at the prospect of more suffering, he still isn’t going to give up on his innocence.

Job is really wrestling with righteousness and justice. Lets look at verse 10: “when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” Job is saying, like he has elsewhere, ‘my right living is spot-on, what makes my life have value.’ This way of thinking leads Job to feel bitter and self-justified, and act rebellious toward God when suffering comes.

Contrast this with 1 Peter 1:7: “…for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

From those touched by the gospel, the purpose of suffering isn’t to prove our righteousness. It is to produce in us a perseverance in the trust in Jesus—in the righteousness given us through faith in the atonement of the Son of God. This results in praise, glory and honor.

The knowledge that our value and rightness comes from the love of God in Christ leads one to feel grateful, think God-glorifying thoughts, and act patiently, joyfully and humbly toward God, the world and others. The Gospel is the Wisdom of God.

I imagine Job would have appreciated Peter’s input immensely. If he could have only seen the heavenly scene of God’s love and satan’s accusations, persecutions understood in light of the loving heart of God. And that the goal isn’t peace and joy in our personal righteousness but in Christ Jesus, knowing and being known by Him.

Chapter 24: Job hates to see the wicked unpunished and the weak suffer at their hands. Although earlier he struggled to believe that justice will be served to the wicked, he now comes back with a strong conviction of it being reality.

We see here that Job is looking for more than comfort. He is seeking an explanation for his shattered world, and wants to put the pieces back together rightly. He is seeking wisdom.

The next verses in the poetic interlude in chapter 28 are asking that very question:

Summary ch 25: Bildad

v1-6: Tiny little humans can’t be righteous compared to God of the heavens

Summary 26: Job

Job sarcastically mocks Bildad’s attempt at a response about the majesty of God, and then shows off his own knowledge of God’s majesty in the heavens. Job seems to be kind of ‘showing off,’ maybe wise in his own eyes, maybe genuinely frustrated by the lack of clarifying rebuttal.

Summary ch 27: Job

v1-6: Job will not lie and deny his integrity and position of innocence before God.

V7-10: Clarifies and describes God’s judgment of the wicked.

Summary ch 29: Job describes his life before the loss: blessed. Success, respect, engaging in meaningful service and help to the suffering poor, widows, and orphans.

Summary ch 30: Job describes his life after the loss: shame and pain. “But now…” mocked by ‘worthless’ people, gnawing pains, no support from anyone.

Summary ch 31: Job’s not-guilty plea (and condemnation of God’s justice). Job testifies to the wisdom he has walked in—the ways he has thought, felt and acted toward God and others, validating the truthfulness of his claims with theological rationales reasoning and self-invoked curses—

Inner Purity: v1-4: Job never looked lustfully at a woman

“I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman…” because God sees his every step and will bring disaster and judge wickedness.

Honesty: v5-8: Job never was conniving, deceitful or covetous to his gain or others’ loss

“If I have walked with falsehood… if my heart has been led by my eyes… or if my hands have been defiled… then may others eat what I have sown, and may my crops be uprooted.”

Fidelity to marriage: v9-12 Job never sought to commit adultery

“If my heart has been enticed by a woman, or if I have lurked at my neighbor’s door… that would have been wicked, a fire that burns to Destruction… then may my wife grind another man’s grain. It would have uprooted my harvest.”

Fairness: v13-15 Job never abused power to silence those under him

“If I have denied justice to any of my servants, whether male or female, when they had a grievance against me” … he will have no defense before the God who values people without favoritism

Charity: v16-23 Job never denied helping others

“If I have denied the [needs of and justice for] the poor … widow… fatherless… then let my arm fall from the shoulder, let it be broken off at the joint. For I dreaded destruction from God, and for fear of his splendor I could not do such things.”

Idolatry: v24-28 Job never trusted or adored creation more than the Creator

“If I have put my trust in gold, or said to pure gold, ‘You are my security,’ … if I have regarded the sun in its radiance or the moon moving in splendor, so that my heart was secretly enticed and my hand offered them a kiss of homage, I would have been unfaithful to God on high.…”

Pride: v29-34 Job never hid his sin from others due to fear of consequences to reputation

“If I have rejoiced at my enemy’s misfortune… if I have concealed my sin as Adam did by hiding my guilt in my heart because I so feared the crowd and so dreaded the contempt of the clans that I kept silent and would not go outside…”

Integrity in dealings: v38-40 Job never mismanaged his property or workers

“If my land cries out against me… if I have devoured its yield without payment or broken the spirit of its tenants, then let briers come up instead of wheat and stinkweed instead of barley.”

All Job’s wisdom, the ways Job was thinking, feeling and acting, were what made God say of him: “There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

And yet, through the loss and suffering, and even with the refining efforts of his friends, without the light of the Gospel, Job currently has not been able to mine and refine the right way to think, feel and act toward God. In this section, he says in his heart:

(“Oh, that I had someone to hear me!
I sign now my defense—let the Almighty answer me;
let my accuser put his indictment in writing.

Surely I would wear it on my shoulder,
I would put it on like a crown.

I would give him an account of my every step;
I would present it to him as to a ruler.)

While Job desires to wear his righteousness like a crown before his accuser, the Apostle Paul would chuck his own righteousness in the garbage when considering a faith-based righteousness and his relationship with Jesus.

Philippians 3:8-9:

“What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”

Our application today: Do you know where to find wisdom? Are you able to view your suffering in light of God’s love and grace through Jesus? Do you have gospel-touched friends who you can honestly and openly process your pain with, leading you to right feeling, thinking and acting toward God? Today is a great day to turn to the wisdom of God—faith in Jesus and what He’s done for us so that like Paul we too are willing to lose everything for the sake of the joy of knowing God.

Job 28:1-11:

There is a mine for silver
and a place where gold is refined.
Iron is taken from the earth,
and copper is smelted from ore.
Mortals put an end to the darkness;
they search out the farthest recesses
for ore in the blackest darkness.
Far from human dwellings they cut a shaft,
in places untouched by human feet;
far from other people they dangle and sway.
The earth, from which food comes,
is transformed below as by fire;
lapis lazuli comes from its rocks,
and its dust contains nuggets of gold.
No bird of prey knows that hidden path,
no falcon’s eye has seen it.
Proud beasts do not set foot on it,
and no lion prowls there.
People assault the flinty rock with their hands
and lay bare the roots of the mountains.
They tunnel through the rock;
their eyes see all its treasures.
They search the sources of the rivers
and bring hidden things to light.

But where can wisdom be found?
Where does understanding dwell?

Job 28:20-28

Where then does wisdom come from?
Where does understanding dwell?
It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing,
concealed even from the birds in the sky.
Destruction and Death say,
“Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.”
God understands the way to it
and he alone knows where it dwells,
for he views the ends of the earth
and sees everything under the heavens.
When he established the force of the wind
and measured out the waters,
when he made a decree for the rain
and a path for the thunderstorm,
then he looked at wisdom and appraised it;
he confirmed it and tested it.
And he said to the human race,
“The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom,
and to shun evil is understanding.”