Week 3 - Job 7-9 - Need for an Arbiter

 In Job 7:17-21, we see Job complain that God appears hyper-focussed on man and proposes a novel solution:

Job 7:21

Why do you not pardon my transgression

and take away my iniquity?

For now I shall lie in the earth;

you will seek me, but I shall not be.”

But Bildad points out that a pardon would be unjust, which is something out of God's character.

Job 8:2-3

“How long will you say these things,

and the words of your mouth be a great wind?

Does God pervert justice?

Or does the Almighty pervert the right?

So Job asked the telling question:

Job 9:2 

 “Truly I know that it is so:

But how can a man be in the right before God?"

How is it possible, in a legal argument with God, to “be in the right (tsadaq)"?  How would the case even be tried?  In Job 9:1-12, Job describes God as an incredible invisible force.  There is something missing.

Job 9:32-33

For he is not a man, as I am, that I might answer him,

that we should come to trial together.

There is no arbiter between us,

who might lay his hand on us both.

This arbiter was not revealed until the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, when not a pardon was given, but rather a ransom was paid.

1 Timothy 2:5-6

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

This solution laid hidden from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:7-9), but its need is uncomfortably exposed in the heart of everyone who quiets themselves, experiences creation and then meets the creator.

Please see also Complaining.

Week 2 - Job 3-6 - Verklempt

If there was ever a person who had a right to complain, it was Job.  That complaint he spoke after seven days of silence to a small group of friends who had gathered to console him.  He repeatedly lamented his own birth and ultimately said:

I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;

    I have no rest, but trouble comes.”

Job 3:26

At no time did he skip a Sunday, or in his case a Saturday.  His piety and execution of justice had been continuous.  Yet, trouble still came.  

In response, one of his "friends" Eliphaz questioned Job's source of confidence:

Is not your fear of God your confidence,

and the integrity of your ways your hope? 

Job 4:6 

And then related a question that had come to him in a dream:

‘Can mortal man be in the right before God?

    Can a man be pure before his Maker?

Job 4:17

Unable to save ourselves, there is only one option.  Eliphaz continues:

“As for me, I would seek God,

    and to God would I commit my cause, . . ."

Job 5:8

But, presuming too much on God's intention, Eliphaz promises Job that if he did this, that God would restore him:

You shall come to your grave in ripe old age,

    like a sheaf gathered up in its season.

Job 5:26

Job sees through this, identifies it as a mirage, and so convincingly Eliphaz becomes verklempt:

For you have now become nothing;

    you see my calamity and are afraid.

Job 6:21

We are promised that everything will work out for our good, if we love God as one called according to his purpose.  It will happen when we enter into glory.  There is nothing that can prevent it (Romans 8:28-39).

Week 1 - Job 1-2 - Round 3

Satan in the Book of Job is constrained.  We mistakenly read freedom into Satan's response to God:

The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”  

Job 1:7

But Satan was expelled from expelled from Heaven (Revelation 12:7-17).  Consider him rather a caged animal.

Round 1

A present is good, right?  When there are two siblings, but only one toy, there is trouble.  Giving a present to one but not the other brings tears and the inevitable “That’s not fair!”  

As explained by R. C. Sproul in Tabletalk, this is how Augustine and later by Aquinas defined evil.  Evil does not exist without good.  The definition of evil always depends on the presence of good.

In this way, evil can be the result of God without God being the origin of evil.  And, Job clearly understood this in the first round of temptation.  When God withdrew His good, He was not evil.  To which he could still respond:

The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.

Job 1:21b

Round 2

In the second round, Satan proposes one temptation, and is constrained to deliver one of lesser degree.

Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life.

Job 2:4

Instead of tempting him with his very life.  Satan was only permitted to inflict illness.  God withdrew His favor of continued health.  The temptation culminates when Job's wife encourages him to abandon his piety in response to God abandoning him:

“Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” 

Job 2:10b

Round 3

For Job, there was no round 3.  But for Jesus, there was three rounds.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”

Matthew 4:8-9

The third temptation of Christ offered Jesus earthly authority.  But the path that laid before Christ led to the cross.  To go to the cross, to fulfil the redemptive plan, He would have to submit to man’s authority.  

Satan presented to him that ultimate temptation.  Worship the god of this age and save yourself, or serve the true God and lose your life.

Jesus successfully rebuked him.

Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God

    and him only shall you serve.’”

Matthew 4:10