Good morning, brothers. I’ll ask you to turn, please, to Job 38.
We have just been singing and praying the indispensable principle that we might see the Lord, and so I do not see a need to repeat that, because that is our heart. That is what we have been praying.
If I can begin this last session with a benediction, I would like to begin with a benediction. I was reading 2 Thessalonians this morning, and this benediction struck my heart. I will read the benediction, turn it into a prayer, and with that we will begin our study.
Here is the benediction from 2 Thessalonians 3:5:
May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God,
And into the steadfastness of Christ.
What a benediction. Let us make it a prayer, and then add faith to the prayer by saying, “Amen.”
Our Father, we do thank You for Your precious Word. And now we would ask, for every heart here, that You would lead our hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ, and all that You know that means. We ask in the precious name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, we have had a big chunk of Scripture for a very abbreviated time together. I hope you have not been overwhelmed, but let us come back now to the book of Job and to the revelation of the Lord.
The climax of the book is in Job 42:5-6, I believe:
I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eye seeth Thee.
Wherefore I retract,
And repent in dust and ashes.
The goal of the book, it seems to me, is that God was bringing Job to that place where he could say, with all of his being, “Now mine eye seeth Thee.”
The great revelation of the Lord in the book of Job, as I have tried to point out, is by that wonderful title used more in Job than in the whole Bible added together: thirty-one times, El Shaddai—the God who is more than enough.
El means God Almighty; shad is the Hebrew word for breast. God, the Lover, wants to draw us to Himself, to show us that at all times, in all places, under all conditions, He is not only enough; He is more than enough. In our eyes, brother, we need to see Him.
Now, you know at the beginning of the book, just by way of review, Satan charged. He made a double insinuation: he had a charge against Job and a charge against God.
His insinuation against Job—and all the servants of the Lord, therefore his insinuation against you and against me—was this: the only reason we ever serve the Lord, choose the Lord, love the Lord, trust the Lord, adore the Lord, and worship the Lord is because God is generous and gives us gifts. He gives us blessings, and He puts a hedge around us.
Satan suggested that if God were to remove the hedge, God would not have a following. His only hope would be the carrot to entice us and draw us.
Then he made an insinuation against God that comes out of that. His insinuation was this: “God, You are not intrinsically wonderful. You are not attractive. You are not worthy. There is not enough in You to cause someone, apart from Your gifts, to love You for You—to choose You for Who You are.”
So the message of the book—that God is more than enough—rises out of that insinuation. Is God enough when the hedge comes down? Is God more than enough when the hedge comes down? That is the distinctive message of Job.
We have seen that human wisdom tried to answer the wrong question. When you answer the wrong question, you cannot get the right answer. If the question is not the question, the answer cannot be the answer. Then, when they touched on the right question, they gave the wrong answer to the right question.
The question they were asking was, “Why do the godly suffer? Why is Job suffering? What is the mystery of suffering?” The book of Job does not answer that question. It does not attempt to answer that question. The more they asked the question, the deeper into confusion they got, because God does not answer that question.
The three friends of Job gave what they thought was the right answer to the wrong question. They said the reason people suffer is punishment: they are sinners, and God punishes. Job thought he had the right answer to the wrong question, and he said, “No, God does not have a reason. He is capricious. It is just arbitrary.”
“For no reason He did this. One day He just decided to set me up as His target, and so He just began to pick on me for no particular reason whatsoever.” As Job meditated on that, he got into a deeper hole and deeper despair. Then he said God was wrong to do that; He should not have done that. Before it was all over, God was his enemy, and he went into a deep, deep despair. What a sad state of horror.
Then last night, enter Elihu. Bless the Lord for that brother. He was also answering the wrong question, but he had something those other three friends did not have: direction.
Direction is far better than any answer you can ever come up with. Elihu could not give Job an answer, but he gave him a direction. For the first time, Job’s eyes began to look toward the Lord.
Elihu claimed that he had a word from God, that he had a revelation of the Lord. His revelation of the Lord—if you read his speech—was of God as the Teacher. For the first time he introduces this: “Job, maybe it is not punishment for something you have done, and surely it is not arbitrary. Maybe God wants to teach you something.”
He began to unfold possibilities. He did not know what it was, and so he gave these—I found seven—“Maybe He wants to teach you this. Maybe He wants to teach you this. Maybe He wants to teach you this.”
But, Job, has anyone asked, “Where is God my Maker, Who giveth songs in the night?” For the first time, Job’s eyes got off his problem. The three friends were turning his eyes inward: “Look for your sin. Dig deep. Find out what it is. Repent of your sin.”
Elihu takes his eyes off that introspection, turns his eyes toward God in heaven, and he begins to see the Lord.
Now, you remember that it was in the middle of Elihu’s message that a glorious thing happened. Suddenly, as Elihu was speaking, God started to speak.
I personally do not think Elihu stopped speaking. I think that whole message is Elihu. You know how Paul, when we were singing, all of a sudden changed the pronoun and said, “All right, now let us sing ‘You’ instead of ‘He’”? The words were written, “He is Lord,” but all of a sudden we were singing, “You are Lord.” We simply changed the pronoun.
Well, that is what he did here. He changed the pronoun, and now God is speaking. It is really Elihu giving out his message, but Job is not hearing Elihu anymore.
Blessed be the Lord for that day when anyone who handles this precious Book—somewhere in the message, in the beginning, in the middle, or toward the end—God takes over and that instrument fades away. That is what happened here.
This morning we want to pick up at that point, from Job 38 to the end of the book. May God have mercy on us and help us. We want to see what it means, and how God brought Job to the place where he said, “Now mine eye seeth Thee.”
Those very principles that brought Job to that place are everlastingly the same. Those are the principles by which He brings me to say, “Now mine eye seeth Thee,” and the principles by which He brings you to say, “Now mine eye seeth Thee.”
I would like to state for you those general—I never know what to call these things, because I do not want to reduce God’s truth, His living truth, to an outline. First this, second this—they are not stages, points, principles, or things. It is life. It is Christ Himself.
But God has a general movement. There are stages, and Job was brought through these stages. After God allowed him to trace the futility of human wisdom and to be totally confused and baffled by it, as He did then, He will do for us: He will bring an Elihu into our life.
Not somebody who has all the answers—may God deliver us from them—but somebody who has direction; someone who has heard from God, someone who has seen the Lord. His vision of the Lord might not be such a great vision, but it is of the Lord, and he gets our eyes looking away and unto the Lord.
I have found usually—now, do not tie God down, and I do not ever want to tie God down—but usually God waits until you are in some kind of storm. Usually He waits until you have completely used up and are worn out by human wisdom. You have tried everything else.
When you have almost driven yourself crazy trying to find the answers, it seems like each of us has a different bottom, and God has to bring us to the end and to the bottom.
I am amazed. I read Daniel, and we have a record that he was ten times smarter than everybody. If I found a mechanic ten times smarter than all my other mechanics, guess who I would call first if my car broke down? But not them. They had to go through all the other nine mechanics that did not work, and finally they said, “Oh yeah, let us get Daniel.”
It seems like we always go through all the wrong answers first, and then Elihu comes and says, “Where is God? Has anybody considered that?” He turns our eyes to the Lord.
Sometimes God will take a portion of your hedge down—not like Job; He will trim your little hedge, and you will think it all came down, but it did not all come down. When the whirlwind is causing your head to spin and human wisdom has failed, then Elihu comes in and turns your heart toward the Lord.
I cannot take time to do it, but I know that if I could go row by row, you could thank God for some Elihu: some book, some message, some brother, some sister, some young person whom God orchestrated and engineered into your life just at the right time, and who turned your eyes to Him. How we praise God for that.
Let me give another principle concerning how God brought Job to this place. It is very important to realize that God desires to reveal Himself, not answers. He does not desire to give us answers; He desires to give us Himself.
If you look for answers, you are not ready to see El Shaddai. If I am looking for answers, I am not prepared to see El Shaddai.
It is amazing to read this and stand back to get an overview. For thirty-one chapters, Job has been crying out, “I want answers. I want answers. Give me an answer. Speak to me. Tell me why. I cannot live without answers. Untie this knot for me. Unravel the mystery. Why am I going through this? Why am I suffering?”
God finally speaks through Elihu’s message. Does He give answers? I am amazed when I read this: He gives seventy-nine questions. He did not give any answers; He gave seventy-nine questions.
Well, depending on how you count them. I went through them. I have got ninety questions; others have got seventy-nine, and others have less than that, depending on how you break it up. Sometimes you can take some of those revelations and make several questions out of them.
But the point is this: God did not give Job what he thought he needed. Job thought he needed answers, and God gave him more questions. When you think you need answers and you search for answers, all you are going to get are more questions.
Job started off with one question, and he screamed it for thirty-one chapters: “Why?” God said, “All right, let Me add to that seventy-nine more questions.” That was frustrating.
We cannot take time to read Job 38-40, but it is a thrilling section. It would be wonderful to list all the questions and meditate on them. Let me give you this general statement about the section.
At the beginning, I think Elihu is still speaking, and he begins to talk about the inanimate creation: questions about creation, the earth, the sea, the weather, the day, light, night, life, death, storms, snow, hail, frost, dew, lightning, the stars, and the constellations.
Then, as he finishes the inanimate creation, he moves to the animate creation: questions about man, the brain, the birth of a child, animals, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, lions, goats, deer, oxen, horses, hawks, eagles, ostriches, and ravens. Question after question, one after another.
You might say, “God asked all these questions to show how stupid Job was.” Well, I think He succeeded in that, but that is not why God asked the questions. He did not ask them to show how stupid man is.
Now, did Job end up saying, “I am insignificant”? He surely did. But God was asking those questions to show how wise He is, not how insignificant man is.
If we seek for answers, brother, I promise you, you are going to end up with more questions. Then you are going to go to another counselor and say, “What I need is this.” You will read two books on victory, two books on rest, and two books on abiding in Christ. You will keep saying, “I just need answers. Settle it one more time. Tell me what it means to be crucified with Christ. Tell me what identification truth is and how it can be true of me while I live like this.” Question, question, question.
God says, “You want to ask questions? I have some more for you. How about this and this?”
When you read the book of Job, even just on the level of earth, you have to be amazed at how much information is in this book, how much they knew back then, and the subjects that are dealt with.
Job is not only the oldest book in the Bible; it is the oldest book in existence. They have never found a manuscript older than Job anywhere. When you read a chapter such as Job 28, with all of that concerning the wisdom of God and mining, it is amazing how much they knew and how much they did not know.
There is very little information in Job 38-40 that had not been mentioned in the debate. I am not a mathematician, but I listed it all out. I do my studying in charts. I get these big rolls of paper, spread them out on a big desk, and sometimes stand on a chair and look down at it all, trying to get it together.
I figured out that about eighty percent of what Elihu shared, Job had already confessed in the debate. He was not learning anything new from Elihu. He already knew all of that. This was not new information.
In Job 9, Job speaks of God as wise in heart and mighty in strength. He is the One who moves the mountains, shakes the earth, commands the sun to shine and not to shine, stretches out the heavens, tramples the waves of the sea, and made the constellations. He does unfathomable things without number. He is sovereign.
In Job 10, Job says that God’s days are infinite; they are not the days of mortal man. Do not think Job did not know God. He knew all this stuff with the hearing of the ear.
Job 26 speaks about the spirits in the place of the dead, Sheol, and how God knows all of that. He knows the clouds and rain; He hangs the earth on nothing; He makes a boundary for light and darkness and the sea. The pillars of heaven shake at His rebuke. After Job describes creation, he says, “These are the fringes of His ways.” Job knew God.
Job 28 speaks of the One who understands the way and path of wisdom, who sees everything under heaven, weighs the wind, knows the waters of the earth by measure, and limits the rain. Job says that every time God sends lightning, it hits its target; He makes a path for the lightning. Do not think Job did not know God.
I was shocked to see how much Elihu knew about God, and Bildad, and my dear friend Zophar. Eliphaz says in Job 5 that God does unsearchable things, wonders without number. He made the rain, exalts the lowly, frustrates the shrewd, saves the oppressed, counts the stars, and walks on the vault of heaven.
Bildad says that God does not pervert justice. In Job 25:2, dominion and awe belong to Him. There is no number to His hosts, His heavenly troops. Even Zophar says in Job 11:7 that God is unlimited; His depths cannot be discovered, and He cannot be restrained by any.
So I want you to see that what Elihu is saying is not new information. There are new illustrations of wisdom, might, control, eternity, and power, but these boys had good theology. They were cardinal; they were orthodox. They had their theology.
There is a verse in the New Testament and an expression that means a great deal to me: Ephesians 4:21. Paul says, “Ye did not so learn Christ; if so be that ye heard Him, and were taught in Him, even as truth is in Jesus.” I love that expression. The King James Version says, “The truth as it is in Jesus.”
For Job, there was a disconnect. There was the truth, and there was the Lord. God says, “You have got to see the truth in Jesus. You cannot have that disconnect.”
Let me illustrate it from the New Testament. You know that great revelation of our Lord Jesus in Revelation 1. Oh my, what a revelation: His head and hair were white as snow and wool, His eyes were like a flame of fire, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, His voice was like the sound of many waters, and His face shone like the sun in its strength.
He had a long robe down to His feet, a golden girdle about Him, feet like brass refined in a furnace, stars in His hands, and the keys of death and Hades. It is a marvelous vision.
People say each one of those pictures represents an attribute of the Lord. His white hair speaks of His eternity and infinity; His eyes of fire speak of omniscience; His mouth speaks of authority, the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit; His robe is the priestly robe; and His shining face is the glory of God. That is a wonderful vision.
The same one who wrote that—the apostle John—also wrote the Gospel of John. When you go through the Gospel of John, do you see anything of what was pictured in that vision?
His hair was white as wool, speaking of eternity. Did John not write, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”? Is that not the unbeginning beginning? John already knew about His eternity.
His eyes were like a flame of fire. Did John not write in his Gospel, “He needed not that any should testify of man: for He knew what was in man”? John already knew that.
Does the Gospel of John teach that He is almighty? Indeed it does. No one takes His life from Him. He has authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.
In security, He holds the seven stars in His right hand. Does not the Bible say that no one will pluck them out of His hand? “My Father, which gave them Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to pluck them out of the Father’s hand.”
His face shines in glory. Did John not say, “And we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father”? He knew all of that. John had a great theology.
Now, do not get me wrong. I am not suggesting that in the Gospel John had no fellowship with Jesus. He surely did. He had wonderful fellowship. He reclined on the breast of our Lord Jesus.
But something happened in Revelation. Listen to Revelation 1:17:
And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead.
And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Fear not;
I am the first and the last,
And the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore,
And I have the keys of death and of Hades.
John wrote in the Gospel all that you see in Revelation. He had it already written out. But when he saw the truth in Jesus—when he saw it in Jesus—he fell down on his face as a dead man.
Something is different about having the truth and having the truth in Jesus. When John saw the truth in Jesus, he just fell down. What he already knew, when he saw it in the Person of the Lord Jesus, something happened in his heart.
It was something like that which happened to Job. Job did not need to learn Hebrew or Greek, go to Bible school or seminary, or have more information. He already had the hearing of the ear. He had all the information.
But somehow that disconnect needed to be cured. He needed to see the truth in the Person of the Lord Himself. He had truth over here and the Person over here. He was sound; he was theological; he had the right truth.
Now, I told you yesterday that I believe Elihu continued his sermon when God broke in. I do not want to leave God out, but if Elihu continued his sermon, what was he preaching about? What was the theme of his message?
As you go through the message, through those seventy-nine questions, what is he teaching? What is Job hearing? I know he is hearing God, but what is the prevailing theme of these chapters?
There is a great recurring emphasis. I think the first question gives the key to the whole message. Job 38:4:
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if thou hast understanding.
That expression, “if thou hast understanding”—Job, what do you really understand? What do you really know? As you go through the message, fact after fact concerns matters about which Job and all men have no understanding.
At the beginning of Elihu’s message, he had seen God as the Teacher. Now he is going to end his message by showing what a wise Teacher He is. He is the One with understanding. He is the One Who is wise. It is a sermon on the wisdom of God.
It is a sermon on how much God knows, how transcendent He is, and how far beyond man’s understanding He is. It is thrilling to go through this.
He talks about God’s wisdom when He created the universe and the morning stars sang together. He speaks of the wisdom of God when He made and restrained the seas, when He created the sun and the solar system and set it in perfect balance. He shows God’s wisdom in every living thing, from man down to the insects.
He speaks of His wisdom in making the light: where does light come from, and how does it work? He speaks of darkness, His control over the weather, and how He is in charge of all of that. Question after question after question shows how wise God is—how brilliant, how infinitely wise.
He talks about the constellations and the creation of the human brain. He speaks of all the waters on the earth. If you were to divide all the waters in the oceans into drops, how many drops would there be? God knows. He knows how many drops.
Then He pictures the mountains and weighs them all, the earth and all its masses, and the constellations. How much does mass weigh? God knows. It is a sermon on the wisdom of God, wise enough even to feed the animals.
I love Job 39:14. He says an ostrich lays an egg, puts it in the dirt, and the ostrich is stupid—it just walks away. Who watches over that egg so some animal does not come and step on it? God does that. That is the wisdom of the Lord.
He goes on and on about the wisdom of God. Now, you say, “Does He not talk about power?” Oh, yes. He talks about other attributes of God: His control over Behemoth and Leviathan, power in the horse, and all of that. He speaks of God’s goodness—how He feeds, protects, and oversees His creation.
But if you are going to understand how to get to El Shaddai, you must see that this is a message on the wisdom of God. Job begins to see how wise God is.
Now let me set this before you, brothers. I speak as a fool, but if God were only good—I know that is hard to imagine; picture Him as having no other attribute, just good, that is all—if He were only good and nothing else, would there be pain on the earth? Sickness? Suffering? Retardation? Affliction? Hardship? Injustice? Oppression?
If God were only good, none of those things would be on the earth. But because He is also wise—He is good and wise—He can allow the things that He hates. Because He is so wise, He can rule the good and overrule the evil and come up with His own purposes.
His wisdom becomes everything in this matter of suffering. What book in the New Testament mentions Job by name? It is the book of James. That is the end of Job, our last chapter. What does the first chapter talk about? The first chapter talks about suffering, testing, trial, and endurance.
Then James says, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God.” Why does he reveal wisdom in terms of suffering? I would think, if any of you lack strength when you are suffering, let him ask of God. If any lack patience, comfort, or sympathy, let him ask of God.
But he says no: when you are suffering, you need wisdom. What is that all about?
There is a similar verse in 1 Peter 4:19, in that book on suffering:
Wherefore let them also that suffer according to the will of God
Commit their souls in well-doing unto a faithful Creator.
If I am suffering, why do I need to know God as Creator? I would amend the verse: if any of you suffer in the will of God, let him entrust his soul to God as a sympathetic High Priest. That is how I would have written it—a sympathetic High Priest, a Comforter, a strength-giver, a loving Father, or a mother who embraces you when you are going through suffering.
Why Creator? Why wisdom? I will give you one answer: because when you are going through it and God is taking your hedge down, I promise you that you do not have what it takes. But you have Him Who can create what it takes. You need to see God as Creator.
I am going to let Job answer the question for himself. Go back to Job 42:2.
After hearing this message on the wisdom of God and how wise the Teacher was, he says:
I know that Thou canst do all things,
And that no purpose of Thine can be restrained.
Job, I thought you said He did not have a purpose. I thought you said He did it without a reason, without a cause. Now all of a sudden he says, “I know God can do anything, and no purpose can be thwarted.”
Now he sees. He has taken all that truth which he had with the hearing of the ear and put it into his God, his Person. He has seen it, and he says, “God is wise. He knows why.”
He had been asking, “Why, why, why?” Now his eyes have been turned to the Lord, and he says, “He knows why. He is the wise One. I do not need to know why; I have Him Who knows why. I have God, and if you have God, you do not need to know why.”
Suddenly it becomes enough to Job to draw near to the Lord, because he can trust Him for His wisdom. He is no longer saying, “It is arbitrary. It is without a cause. God is capricious. He just set me up for some reason.”
He says, “Now God has a reason, and nothing can stop it. I do not know what it is, and I do not care what it is. God knows what it is, and that is enough. All I know is that it is not inconsistent with His wisdom, and it is not inconsistent with His love.”
Brothers, do you believe that when anything comes into your life, it is not inconsistent with His wisdom and not inconsistent with His love? You say, “But I do not know why.” You do not have to know why. He knows why.
That became a great resting place for this brother, and his eyes were opened. He says, “Now mine eye seeth Thee. You know why. You are the wise One. You are in control of the whole universe.”
“I do not deserve that You should come down to me. I challenged You to come down, but You did it. Who is taking care of the galaxies while You are here? God, You came down and talked to me.”
He is amazed with the goodness of God, and he is amazed with the wisdom of God. He settles it now and says, “I do not need to know why. I know Who. It is enough that He knows why.”
He still does not know what is going on in his life, but what he knows now is that it cannot be thwarted, stopped, or restrained. God has a purpose. For the first time he says, “God has a purpose for this. I do not know what it is. I do not want to know. He knows what it is.”
What a resting place he found in a moment by seeing the truth in Jesus. He found his rest.
This is a great turning point for Job. The debates have had their ministry, the fallen hedge has had its ministry, and dear Elihu has had his ministry. Now Job says, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee.”
Did you notice this important fact? Verse 5 comes before verse 6. Mark that; it is important. Verse 6 tells of Job’s repentance. Verse 5 tells of Job’s revelation of the Lord. The revelation of the Lord comes before repentance comes.
Do not try to mix that up. Do not just read this, “La, la, la, la,” and say, “Now I want to see the Lord, and so the way He did it was that his hedge came down. I will start self-denial and asceticism and take my hedge down.”
Do not take your hedge down. If God wants it down, He will take it down. Do not think, “By doing what I used to do, I am going to get close to God. I will give up desserts. I will give up my vacation.”
One time a brother offered me a very new car. It was not brand new, but it was very new. I said, “No, no, I am just going to stick with my jalopy.” I thought it was more spiritual to drive a jalopy than a nice car.
I turned it down and drove around in a thing held together by the last coat of paint. I thought that was being spiritual. No, that is not being spiritual.
I want you to turn for a minute to Job 22. That is the error that Eliphaz made. He has such spiritual-sounding words. Do not forget, this is human wisdom. Do not trust what Eliphaz says simply because it sounds spiritual. Examine it. Do not trust what Bildad said. Do not dare trust what Zophar said.
Job 22:23-26 says:
If thou return to the Almighty, thou shalt be built up,
If thou put away unrighteousness far from thy tents.
And lay thou thy treasure in the dust,
And the gold of Ophir among the stones of the brooks;
And the Almighty will be thy treasure,
And precious silver unto thee.
For then shalt thou delight thyself in the Almighty,
And shalt lift up thy face unto God.
Does that not sound spiritual? What a statement: “Place your gold in the dust. Even if you have the gold of Ophir, place it in the brooks. Then God will become your gold. The Almighty will be your gold.”
What is wrong with that statement? I will tell you what is wrong with it: it is impossible. You cannot place your gold in the dust. You love your gold. You cannot place the gold of Ophir in the brooks. You cannot do it until the Almighty becomes your gold.
Once the Almighty is your gold, it is easy to put your gold in the dust. Revelation comes first.
Eliphaz was trying to put repentance first. “If you repent, if you deny, if you give up, if you surrender, put your gold in the dust, then God will be your gold.” No. God must be your gold first, and then in the wake of that, it is as easy as pie to surrender.
All those things we think we are giving up, we discover to be rubbish. It is not a struggle to give up rubbish.
Look again at Job 42:5-6:
I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear;
But now mine eye seeth Thee.
Wherefore I retract,
And repent in dust and ashes.
The first reality of really seeing the Lord is repentance. That is the first outworking. God is not going to repent for you, but seeing the Lord makes your repentance real. God guarantees the reality of your repentance if you see Him.
Job saw himself in the light of the Lord. That is new-covenant repentance. A lot of people say, “We need to repent, we need to repent,” but they do not know new-covenant repentance.
Jeremiah 31:18-19 says:
Surely after that I was turned, I repented.
The turning comes first. I have got to see the Lord first, and then repentance follows.
Now, the Bible is clear that Job repented, and the question comes: of what did he repent?
You can go through the debates and not have a hard time finding things to repent of, because Job was really losing it for a little while. In Job 32:2, he justified himself before God. Maybe he repented of self-vindication.
In Job 32:1, there is self-righteousness. Through all the debates, he disclaimed his own righteousness. You think a man should repent of self-righteousness? Maybe he repented of that.
In Job 40:8, God says, “Wilt thou even annul My judgment? Wilt thou condemn Me, that thou mayest be justified?” I went through the debates and picked up expressions that Job, in his despair, used of God.
He not only said that God was his enemy, against him, and had done wrong. He called God a mocker of the innocent, a destroyer of man’s hope, an oppressor, a persecutor, and One Who invents pretexts against the innocent. Do you think language like that needs to be repented of?
In Job 23:2, he calls his complaining rebellion: “My complaint is rebellion.” Did Job ever murmur? Did he ever gripe? Did he ever complain? Do you think he needed to repent of that?
Read Job 3. Do you think there is any self-pity in Job? Do you think that needs to be repented of? No doubt.
All of those things—self-justification, self-righteousness, self-vindication, condemning God, harsh words, complaining, impatience, self-pity, mocking his friends, prayers he should repent of, despairing of life, and disregarding God’s gift of life—needed repentance.
But I do not think that is what Job 42:5-6 means when he says, “I retract; I repent.” I do not think he had those things in mind. He is not saying, “I have been self-righteous, complaining, and trying to defend myself.” That is not what is on his mind.
What did Job repent of? I believe it was his sin of supplementing God.
Remember I told you that he gave two answers to the question, “Is God enough when the hedge comes down?” His first answer was, “Yes, if I also have the reason why.” I think that is what he repented of.
“I am sorry, Lord. I repent that I ever tried to supplement You, that I ever said, ‘You are enough if, with You, I get an explanation.’ You are enough alone, and I repent that I ever asked why.”
Included in that, no doubt, he repented of self-righteousness, self-vindication, self-pity, a complaining spirit, strong words against God, and all of that. But God looked at those things as wind. Remember, the words of one in despair are just words to the wind.
So now we ask him again, “Job, why are you suffering?” Here is his answer, I believe: “Ed, do you not know that God’s ways are higher than our ways, higher than the heaven is above the earth? His ways are higher.”
“I do not know why I am suffering, but He knows why I am suffering, and I have Him. I know that He has a plan. Nothing is going to stop the plan. Nothing is going to thwart His purpose. He can do all things.”
“Nothing in my life is inconsistent with His wisdom and with His love. I do not know why. But Ed, do not ask me that again, because I do not care why anymore. I have Him, and He knows why.”
In passing, if you glance at Job 42:7, I was confused by that. God said to the three friends, “Ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath.” Then I went through the debates and said, “Lord, were You there? Did You hear those debates? How can You say Job spoke what was right?”
I do not think He is talking about the debate. I think He is talking about the repentance. Job spoke what was right in the repentance. Those other three men did not repent, and that is why they had to offer the animal sacrifices.
I want you to remember that at this point Job had not received one leaf of his hedge back. When he saw the Lord, when he found his rest, when he said, “Now mine eye seeth Thee,” when he repented from asking why, when he saw El Shaddai—at that point he did not have the slightest expectation that anything would ever be restored.
The hedge did not matter. He did not repent so that he would get his hedge back. He did not know that another one hundred and forty years would be added to his life. At that time, he did not know it.
All he knew was that God is enough. If I know Who, I do not need to know why. “Lord, forgive me for all this other stuff and for supplementing You. Now mine eye seeth Thee.”
Is that not how God does it in our lives? He shows us how futile human wisdom is. He brings Elihu into our life. Somebody points us to the Lord. We begin to see that God knows, God is in charge, God is in control, and He is sovereign over everything. I do not have to know; I can rest in Him.
One more thing, brothers, and then we will wrap up the weekend and pray that God will tie up all the loose ends in our hearts.
The only reference to Job in the New Testament is in the book of James, James 5:11:
Behold, we call them blessed that endured:
Ye have heard of the patience of Job,
And have seen the end of the Lord,
How that the Lord is full of pity, and merciful.
I like the way the King James Version words it: “Ye have seen the end of the Lord.” When you read the book of Job, you wonder if you have seen the end of Job. But that is not the meaning of “end” there. The end is the purpose God had in mind, the outcome, the results.
I would like to show you, as we close, the blessed outcome of the Lord in Job’s life. When a person finally settles on El Shaddai, the God Who is more than enough when the hedge comes down, he not only shuts the mouth of the enemy and all his insinuations, but he also fulfills God’s glorious end—the results that God has in view.
Let me suggest, by way of analysis, three blessed results—the end of the Lord. The first is this: the Lord was blessed.
As far as the record goes, Job did not even know there was a Satan. Eliphaz did not know there was a Satan. Bildad did not know there was a Satan. Zophar did not know there was a Satan. Elihu did not know there was a Satan.
When you come into all this trial and spiritual warfare, they were starting from a different point than we start. They did not even know there was a Satan. This was all between God and Satan up there. God was the only One Who knew.
This is for Him. This is all about Him. He is the only One Who knew. When Job settled on El Shaddai and said, “Now mine eye seeth Thee,” what a blessing it brought to the heart of God.
The second part of El Shaddai is breast. Do you ever see a mother nursing a child? You say, “Oh, look at that child, so content.” Look at that mother—so content. She looks down at that baby, her eyes smiling. She is so happy.
When my daughter was nursing her child, sometimes she got frustrated because the child would not eat. God has made a woman so that her breast fills up, and she said, “If he does not eat, this hurts.”
When we do not draw from El Shaddai’s breast, it hurts Him. He is so full and wants us to come and draw. He is in pain. The first blessing, the outcome of the Lord, is that the Lord Himself might be blessed.
Suppose you suffered in a way that no one ever knew about. You are not like Joni Eareckson, David Ring, Jim Elliot, or other wonderful saints whose lives have been recorded in books. You suffered, and no one ever knew of it. Would that be a waste?
You might say, “Well, I went through all this for nothing.” No. The Lord knows about it, and how blessed He is when you draw near to El Shaddai and draw from Him. It is not a waste. The biggest part of the blessing is Godward.
The second part of the end of the Lord is from God to Job: Job was blessed. I love those wonderful words in Job 42:8: “The Lord accepted Job.” Oh, that is precious.
A great deal of attention is placed on the fact that Job received a double blessing: from seven thousand sheep to fourteen thousand sheep; three thousand camels to six thousand; five hundred yoke of oxen to a thousand; and so on.
Some say that because everything was doubled, it was probably just poetry—that it was not six thousand three, but exactly six thousand, and so on. To me, that shows the wonder and power of the Lord, that He could do it exactly. I do not have a problem with that.
Especially when you see the seven sons and three daughters. Job 42:13 says he had seven more sons and three more daughters. Someone says, “How come his children were not doubled?” Well, they were. He did not lose the first ten.
If one of your loved ones who is a Christian dies, you do not lose them either. Do not say, “I lost my father. I lost my mother. I lost my wife.” You lose something if you do not know where it is. That is when you lose something.
His children were in heaven, and he got ten more. He got double children as well. The Lord blessed this.
I do not think the real blessing for Job was the double physical blessing. If God came to Job and said, “Here is My plan, Job. I am going to have you go through this, but at the end you are going to have seven thousand sheep,” Job would say, “Wow, are You kidding? All I have to do is go through that for seven thousand sheep? What a deal.”
He was not going to do that for seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, or anything like that. He would not do that for a million cows. The double blessing is a picture of something better: the firstborn.
I do not know if you have read Stephen Kaung’s book on Job, The Splendor of His Ways. If you do not have that, read it, because Brother Kaung takes the whole idea of the double blessing as maturity and sonship—moving into that glorious reality. That is the real blessing.
For Job, he had seen El Shaddai. Now God is blessed, and Job is blessed, and it is that spiritual blessing. When he settled on the Lord alone, he was not looking for a reward. It was not a physical thing.
I get upset when I hear some of these folks who always have their hand in your pocket, constantly trying to make it sound spiritual because it is a faith-promise plan or a seed-faith thing: “Send in your money. Give to the Lord. Here is my address.” This is a spiritual blessing.
The first part of the blessing is to the Lord Himself. The second part is to Job. But there is a third part: Job became a blessing to the world. It was from God through Job, and now it is to the whole world.
This same woman who said, “Curse God, and die,” whose words belonged to the wind, is now blessed by God. Her youth is renewed, and she becomes the mother of ten more. What a glorious blessing that is. It says a lot about them coming back together in their own union.
According to Job 42:11, Job was a blessing to all his family—his brothers and sisters. His testimony was restored. All who had known him before were no longer throwing insults at him; they were giving gifts to him. God turned it all around.
Would you not expect Job, after those debates, to be a little upset with those three men? But he has no animosity and no vindictiveness.
You know what surprised me? I thought it said, “And God said, ‘Pray for your friends.’” But God never said, “Pray for your friends.” He told the friends that Job would pray, because He knew that Job would pray. That was Job’s idea.
It was not God’s idea to tell him, “Pray for your friends.” Job’s heart had been so moved that he says, “Before, I was arguing with my friends. Now I am going to pray for my friends.”
That is the same thing that happened to Stephen when he was being stoned. He prayed for his enemies. If it were not for a verse like Matthew 5:44—when your enemies persecute you, pray for them—they would never get on a prayer list. But praise God, then we know God’s will.
Get the impact of what is happening here. By God’s instrument, Elihu, Job’s heart has been turned to the Lord. By God’s grace, He came down—and Job did not deserve it, and we do not deserve it—and He revealed El Shaddai to him.
By a miracle, God produced repentance in him. Now God is blessed, Job is blessed, his wife is blessed, his children are blessed, his relatives are blessed, and his neighbors are blessed.
At the end, Job is offering sacrifices and praying. What is that? That is a priest. He has become a priest. God has turned him into a priest to minister to others.
May I suggest, brothers—and hear me out on this—I would not be surprised if everything Job went through was because of God’s great love for Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar.
You say, “Would God let Job go through that for them?” Let me give you this illustration, and then we really will wrap it up. Second Peter 2:6-9 says:
And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes condemned them with an overthrow,
Having made them an example unto those that should live ungodly;
And delivered righteous Lot, sore distressed by the lascivious life of the wicked
(for that righteous man dwelling among them, in seeing and hearing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day with their lawless deeds):
The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation.
Do you get the impact of that? Why did God send down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities? You say, “Because they were very wicked. They were sinners.”
But I am reading here about a man named Lot who was righteous. Did you not read your Old Testament? Righteous? Is he not the one who offered his daughters to the homosexuals to be violated? Are not his children the result of incestuous relations? Righteous Lot?
Is he not the one who chose by sight and decided to have Sodom rather than the blessing of the Lord? How I misjudge. When you look with these eyes, I would have put Lot in hell and Judas in heaven. Just from the outside, that is what I would have done.
But God says, “No, there is a righteous man there. I can see what you cannot see. He looks worldly; he looks like a backslider. But I see My servant.” Then God says, “I am going to rain down fire and brimstone. I am going to destroy these cities.” Then He adds, “The Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptation.”
Did He do that for Lot? Did He destroy all those people just to deliver His backslidden child out of temptation? That is what it looks like.
I think Job might have gone through all of this because God loved Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and there was no other way to minister to them. Now Job’s life has become redemptive.
Brothers, our lives are redemptive. It is not for you, what you are going through. It is for them. It is for others. God says, “You are expendable, and I am expendable.” He is not willing that the ungodly should perish.
“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.” That is not only when they die and go to heaven. It is when they die to self, even now. You are expendable, and I am expendable.
When God brings something into your life and tears down your hedge, it is enough that He knows. The end of the Lord is that God is going to be blessed by this, you are going to be blessed by this, and the whole world is going to be blessed by this. It does not matter whether you know or do not know.
So now we are at the end, and I ask the question again: Is God enough when the hedge comes down?
Do you have the truth as it is in Jesus? Oh, may God show us our Lord Jesus. He is infinitely enough. He is satisfyingly enough.
For your sake, trust in the Lord. For their sake, trust in the Lord.
But for the sake of the One—I do not want to be irreverent—Whose breast is full, and full for you, for His sake, will you not say, “Now mine eye seeth Thee”?
Let us pray.
Father, thank You so much for allowing Your servant Job to go through all of these experiences in order that we might know, once, finally, and forever, that El Shaddai is more than enough when the hedge comes down. Ah, we praise You, Lord.
Work in our hearts. Forgive us, we pray, for trying to supplement You. May it be, from this moment until we enter heaven, Jesus and Jesus alone. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.