The Sufferings of Job and Jesus

       I trust that I have given all of my followers enough time to digest all the goodness of last weeks Talby Tuesday and are finally hungry for another post! Well, this entry is going to be a complete 180 from the absurdity and will be a bit more serious and theological in character.  Over the past couple months our church has been going through the book of Job and I have really enjoyed the sermons given by my Pastor. The sermons have made me think back to one of my favorite classes in Seminary. It was a class on the wisdom literature given by Professor CJ Williams. One of the reasons why I loved the class so much was because his teaching gave me a fresh perspective on the message of Job.

Photo: Simon Marsden

       You see, for so long I had always viewed Job as a book which merely answered questions like, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" or "Where is God when tragedy strikes?" or the popular, "If God is good, sovereign, and powerful how does he allow evil to exist?" Don't get me wrong, the book of Job does address these questions. There were times in my life where I wrestled with the goodness of God in the midst of human suffering and tragedy and verses like, "Shall we accept good from the hand of the LORD and never anything evil?" and "The LORD gave and the LORD taketh away, blessed be the name of the LORD," were some of the only words that made sense and gave comfort. But I have come to see that while the book of Job touches on these subjects, there is a far greater point to the story. Because the story is centered around a great and honorable man who seemed to have everything, but was then stripped of it all by God. All of his wealth, all of his loved ones, and all of his health were taken out of his hands. His reputation and honor, which was once so lofty, was cast down and trampled upon by his friends as they derided him as an ungodly and faithless man. But while Job's friends falsely accuse him, he maintains his trust in God and his purity before God. Because he maintains his innocence, Job cries out to God to vindicate him and prove him to be in the right. Ultimately, this is what happens. God vindicates and restores Job, so that at the end of the book he has greater riches than when the story first began!  What Professor Williams taught me (and what I am continually seeing) is that the life of Job and Jesus are incredibly similar. The book of Phillipians teaches us that Jesus, "Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 

Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth." Do you see how both Job and Jesus are stripped of their glory, suffer, but are ultimately restored to a greater position than in the beginning? Therefore the great point of Job is not so much answering the question why "Bad things happen to good people," but its central theme is its rich Messianic character. It is alarming to me how similar the experiences and words of Job are to the sufferings of Jesus. Listen to some of the words from Chapter 16 which our Pastor preached on this morning, "They have gaped upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered themselves together against me. God hath delivered me to the ungodly, and turned me over into the hands of the wicked...." These are the words of Job, but they sound a lot like Jesus. And that's exactly the point. The point of Job and the point of the whole Bible is about revealing the suffering servant of God who bears God's righteous wrath in the place of deserving sinners but is vindicated and rewarded because of his innocence. The point of this entry is to share with you what God is teaching me and I hope that this will help you see the Gospel in the book of Job. I hope that you will read it again or for the first time with a fresh perspective. A perspective that has an eye fixed on Christ who freely gave himself for our sins and was condemned and cursed by God because he chose to identify himself with us and all of our sins but rose victoriously over the curse of sin because of his spotless and blameless life. All praise and honor to him, whose name is above all names!