The Final Exam | Dr. David Jeremiah | Job 38-42

Message Description:

Imagine a student spending hours going to class and taking diligent notes, reading the textbook, completing all the projects, and going to study groups. Now imagine after all that work that the student failed the class because they didn’t complete the final exam. Yet many people go through life the same way.

And four times in these verses, God calls job a special Old Testament name.
He says, job, my servant, my servant, job.
If you have a AAA pension to underline your Bible, you might want to underline those verses where those little statements are made.
There’s four of them within a period of just two verses. Job had become the servant of God.
And how did he serve God?
He served God through his suffering did ever stop and think that maybe some of the suffering God allows in our lives is an opportunity for us to fellowship with the sufferings of Jesus Christ and to serve Almighty God.
Sometimes people come to me with all of their challenges.
And I might say to them, you know, God has trusted you with an awful lot.
Sometimes God trusts us with stuff, doesn’t he? And we serve him through our suffering.
A college student went to take a final exam at the end of the semester to his amazement when he opened the textbook, he did not know the answer to one single question on the test.
He knew he had no possibility of passing the exam.
So he attempted to win the professor’s favor with a bit of humor across the top of the exam page.
He wrote only God knows the answer to these questions.
Merry Christmas, he turned in the paper, went home for the Christmas break and during the holidays, he received his exam in the mail, it had been graded by the professor and at the top in big red letters were these words, God gets 100 you get zero Happy New Year.
All of us remember walking into an exam for which we were totally unprepared.
The sinking feeling in your stomach when that happens. I’m glad those days are over.
But job is about to have a similar experience.
Job is about to be exposed to an exam for which he has no answers.
If you’ve been following the dialogue with his four friends, you know that job has been accusing God the judge of heaven and earth of injustice.
He’s been saying in essence that God hasn’t treated him fairly.
He’s been begging again and again for an opportunity to appear before God and state his case because he believes that if he can just get in front of God, that God will vindicate him and he can get out from under the pressure of all of his friend’s accusations.
Interesting twist takes place.
At the beginning of this message, job had sought for an opportunity to put God on the witness stand, ask him some questions and now God is going to put job on the witness stand and cross examine him.
As one writer observed job finally got what he wanted, but he ended up not wanting what he got.
It’s significant to me as we move forward into these verses that God answers.
None of the questions that job had asked earlier in the book, God gives an account to job of his own sovereignty, of his own power, of his own creative ability.
He wants to impress upon job that with his limited knowledge, he is in no position whatsoever to be questioning God’s rule and government of the universe.
Now, the section to which we have opened today focuses around two things, the silence of job and ultimately the submission of job in chapter 38 through 40 God is going to bring job to a place where he won’t say anything more.
He, he will just be totally captivated and intimidated and silent.
Notice how this all begins in the first three verses of chapter 38 the Lord answered job out of the world went and said, who is this?
Who darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself job like a man.
I will question you and you shall answer me 35 chapters ago.
God spoke and for all of the 35 chapters since then, he’s not said one single word.
But now in a direct confrontation with job, he speaks out of the storm.
The Bible says, the Lord answered job out of the whirlwind just as he spoke to Moses out of a storm just as he spoke to Elijah out of a storm, just as Ezekiel saw the glory of God in the storm.
Now, God will speak to job in a storm.
Let’s be honest, most of us would rather hear God speak to us in the sunshine.
But quite often, in fact, most often when God really wants to say something to us and press it upon our hearts.
He speaks to us out of the storms of our life.
First of all, in this passage, job is accused of obscuring the nature of God.
By his many words, the more job spoke, the more convoluted. He made God out to be.
Job was in way over his head. And God said to jobs, son, brace yourself like a man.
I will question you and you will answer me.
And so we begin in the 38th chapter with the asking that provoked job’s silence.
Now notice God is going to ask job some questions and we’re going to move through this very quickly because there are a lot of verses here and some of them, we’re going to summarize.
So you stay with me, but get the picture.
Now, job is finally where he always had wanted to be since the beginning of this book.
He’s in front of Almighty God and God is going to ask him some questions.
Question number one job, what do you know about history?
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell me if you have understanding who determined its measurements, surely, you know, job or who stretched the line upon it to work where its foundations fasten or who laid its cornerstone.
When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shot it for joy. God tells job.
Uh I was a builder who surveyed the site. I marked off the dimensions. I poured the footings.
I laid the cornerstone. I erected the structure and it was so wonderful that the stars sang in the chorus of the angels shouted for joy.
But job, where were you? I don’t remember you being there. What do you know about history, Joe.
And there’s no answer. Ok, Joe category number two.
What do you know about oceanography versus 8 to 11 or who shut in the sea with the doors when it burst forth and issued from the womb?
When I made the clouds, its garment and thick darkness, its swaddling band when I fixed my limit for it and set bars and doors.
When I said this far, you may come but no further. And here your proud waves must stop.
Next. God asked job about the sea, one of the most prominent features of his creation for in fact, it covers three quarters of the earth’s surface.
And God employs this beautiful language describing the oceans like a newborn baby.
What did job know about the oceans. Nothing.
God adds that at the time of creation, he fixed the limits for the shoreline.
The ocean could not go beyond these fixed points because God set its doors and its bars in place as if bolted shut and held in place.
The sea is restrained in its appointed place by God. Job. Do you know anything about that?
Joe, what do you know about history? Nothing. What do you know about oceanography?
Nada Job. Here’s the third one. What do you know about meteorology in this long section?
Beginning at verse 12 and going all the way to verse 38 God asked job some penetrating questions about the constellations of the heavens and rather than read all of these verses individually, I have summarized the key questions that God asked Job.
So look up and listen to this conversation. God is speaking. Job is listening. Here’s the question job.
What do you know about meteorology job? Have you ever commanded the sun to rise in the morning?
Are you old enough to remember the beginning of light and darkness?
What do you know about snow and hail and the east wind job?
Can you comprehend the thunder or what causes it to rain?
Do you have knowledge to explain the dew of heaven?
Can you speak intelligently about frost or how water becomes ice job?
Can you speak to the clouds and cause it to rain? Can you send out lightnings?
To the ends of the earth. Can you number the clouds?
Can you pour out the bottles of water from heaven on the earth?
Tell me, job and job remained silent. Dumbfounded by the profound workings of God’s Providence and creation.
Joe, what do you know about history? Nothing. What do you know about oceanography? Not a thing.
Job. Can you explain meteorology? No. OK. Here’s the fourth category, son.
Here’s category number four. What do you know about astronomy? Verses 31 to 33.
Can you bind the cluster of PS or loose the belt of Orion?
Can you bring out Maza in its season or can you guide the great bear with its cubs?
Do you know the ordinances of heaven? Can you set their Dominion over the earth?
You and I have lived during the advent of very strange pseudoscience called astrology.
Astrology is the belief that the stars rule the destiny of human beings.
Hopefully, you haven’t gotten caught up in that because there is absolutely no basis in it whatsoever.
If you’re having a bad life, don’t blame it on the stars, but God is not talking about astrology.
He’s talking about astronomy and there’s a big difference.
Astronomy is the truly scientific evidence based study of the stars and the planets.
And God says in effect job, what do you know about the influence the stars seem to have upon the seasons of the year?
You’ve seen that little circle of stars high in the heavens.
How do these distant stars appear right on time, every year ushering in the spring or job.
What about o the mighty Hunter? You see Him every December striding across the winter skies.
Can you cause the constellations to appear right on time?
And then God asks, can you lead out the bear with its cubs?
And the bear is what we call the big dipper.
It points unerringly to the north And God asks job if he understands the motion of the stars around the heavens.
And of course, job doesn’t have a clue. Yeah, Joe, what do you know about history?
What do you know about oceanography? What do you know about meteorology? What do you know about astronomy?
And now I think God is going to weigh in on job in an area where he knows job has a great deal of fondness for the subject.
And if ever job was going to be able to respond positively to the questions of God, it would be in the category of zoology job.
What do you know about zoology in this section?
God quizzes job on the animal kingdom rather than read all the verses.
I have once again summarized the questions and I will ask them in succession without the descriptive paragraphs that accompany them.
So you will get a sense of the magnitude of this information.
Here is God speaking to job and here’s what he’s saying, job. Can you provide food for the lions.
Can you provide sustenance for the Ravens?
Do you know when the wild mountain goats or the deer mate and give birth to their young?
Do you know who sets the wild donkey free? Can you harness the wild oxen?
Can you comprehend the dimensions of the stork and the ostrich?
And did you ever wonder why God would make a bird that couldn’t fly, could run faster than a horse and would often run off and leave its eggs unguarded in the sand.
Job. Have you considered the majesty of the horse?
Have you pondered its courage and its strength from ancient times? The horse has courageously served humanity in battle. Why?
Well, God endowed horses with a unique character. They love conflict and they love competition.
Finally, job is asked, do the hawks fly by your wisdom and do the eagles mount up at your command.
There. You have it. 11 of God’s creatures, six beasts, five birds for job to explain.
And once again, job is without an answer.
And so God cycles through all of these subjects and when he gets all done and job hasn’t answered one question.
He has no answers for any of them all of a sudden.
Now, the first step in job’s recovery is about to happen. We’ve seen the asking that provoked job’s silence.
Now, notice the answer that proved it in verses one through five of the 40th chapter.
Now, what do you have to say for yourself, Joe. But I’m reading from the message.
Are you going to haul me the mighty one into court and press charges? Job answered. God.
I’m speechless in a words, fail me. I should never have opened my mouth.
I’ve talked too much way too much.
I’m ready to shut up and listen in the new King James version.
It says job, put his hand over his mouth, by the way. Not a bad thing to do occasionally.
Not when you’re trying to protect every other person from a cough, but sometimes you need to do that to protect them from your words from what you’re about to say.
So at this point with the opening of chapter 40 there is a pause in the questioning and God challenges job to answer him.
But now job is beginning to get just a little bit of what’s going on about God’s greatness and God’s power and he decides he better just keep quiet.
He has nothing to say. It’s the old adage.
You can keep your mouth shut and let people think you’re ignorant or you can open it and remove all doubt and, and Job decided to keep his mouth shut.
Now, job is admitting that all his previous complaints against God are without foundation.
He’s admitting that they were empty and futile.
And so he just says nothing but God isn’t finished with him yet because you see God is never happy with us just to be silent.
Did you ever know that you can be silent and still in rebellion.
I remember hearing a story about a little child who was misbehaving.
His mother, put him in time out and made him sit on a stool and he sat there with this defiant look on his face.
He said, well, I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside.
That’s the way a lot of people are, you know, with God, he gets them to a place of silence, but God was not content to bring job to a place of silence.
God was not content to put job in a situation where he would just not respond.
So God is going to take job through another series of questions.
Notice how God confronts job in the 40th chapter verses six through eight.
Then the Lord answered job out of the whirlwind and said, now prepare yourself like a man.
I will question you and you shall answer me. Would you indeed annul my judgment?
Would you condemn me that you may be justified out of the storm?
God again, speaks to job and challenges Him with two more questions. Job.
Are you going to continue to make accusations against me?
Are you going to continue to criticize my, my fairness and my justice?
Are you willing to condemn me so that you yourself might be justified?
Are you able to prove that I am unfair job?
Will you continue to put God in the wrong so you can put yourself in the right.
And then God begins to challenge job again.
He’s already got him to shut up, which has taken quite an effort, but God wants to bring him to submission.
And so he’s going to tell him about some other things.
This is a very interesting section of the book of Job. Job is going to be challenged by God.
And once again, let me summarize God’s words in verses nine through 14. God says this to job.
He asks him about his arm. He says, job, look at your arm.
Is your arm or your power like God’s, listen to your voice.
Can Job’s voice thunder like God’s. He asks him about his appearance.
He says, job, can you clothe yourself with majesty, splendor, glory and beauty like God with sarcasm dripping from his words.
Almighty. God invites Job to ascend his throne and begin to deal with the kind of problems he faces every day.
He says, job. Why don’t you just come up here and sit in my place and you run the world for a while.
Just see what it’s like to deal with. The ungodly. I have to manage every day.
God says to job, one problem I continually have to deal with is the problem of the proud.
I continually have to bring them low and humble them in the hope that they will turn to me and find grace.
Job. Can you do that job in my place.
Are you capable of dealing with pride in others when pride is still an issue in your own life?
Well, I mean, I’ve been dressed down by people before but I’ve never been dressed down like this.
And wouldn’t it be something to be dressed down by Almighty God, when you came in with all of this arrogance in your heart, that you’re gonna finally tell God what’s going on in your life and he’s gonna fix everything and you’re gonna be vindicated.
And all of a sudden, job is finding out there’s a different part of the story than what he was aware of.
So God confronts him and God challenges and then God confounds him since job does not answer God continues to speak.
And this time asking about two more of God’s creations.
And I need to tell you right here, there’s some bit of controversy over what this all means going forward and no one knows for sure.
Some people believe that these two creatures we’re going to talk about called Behemoth and Leviathan are prehistoric creatures.
Maybe even dinosaurs. Please understand the language of these next verses is filled with a great deal of symbolism and a great deal of poetic description.
And that most modern commentators believe that these two animals that God is going to use to teach jobs submission are the hippopotamus and the crocodile.
Now of all the animals God created, why in the world would he use those two?
Are they not two of the ugliest creatures you’ve ever seen in your life?
But God isn’t going to use them because of their beauty.
He’s going to use them because of their strength.
And so he begins to talk with job and he asks him this question beginning in verse 15, he, he asks him about the hippo, the hippopotamus.
The lesson from the hippo if you will.
Most everyone believes that the animal God describes is the hippopotamus.
The word behemoth is the transliteration of a Hebrew word that means super beast.
God reminds job that he’s the creator of both the hippo and of man and he made them incredibly different.
This was the mightiest beast in the animal kingdom, a beast so strong that only God could approach him.
No man could contend with such a creature and surely job would not pretend to be God’s equal when he could not even control what God had created.
And if Job could not contend with the hippo, neither did he have the ability to administer the world as claimed in his charges against God.
And you can read that whole section.
It describes this animal, some of the things don’t fit with a hippo, but it’s all a part of the poetic license of the book of Job.
Now, after he finishes telling job about the hippo and how he created this creature and how powerful this creature is.
He goes from a, an earth monster to a sea monster. And the sea monster is called the Leviathan.
And the Leviathan basically is a transliteration of the Hebrew word for sea monster or sea serpent.
We’ll notice some of the things that God asked job about the crocodile.
Some of them are quite humorous job. Can you catch a crocodile with your rod and reel?
Can you snag him in the jaw with your hook?
Can you put a leash on him and give him as a gift to your girlfriend?
Can you kill him with your spear or your harpoon? Can you remove his outer coat?
Do you even dare to stir him up? Can you approach him with a double bridle?
Can you open the doors of his mouth with his terrible teeth all around?
And after a vivid description of the crocodile, God mentions six weapons that are totally useless against this creature.
The sword, the spear, the dart, the javelin, the arrow and the sling stone.
The crocodile laughs at these says, God, he laughs at these weapons and treats them like a piece of straw or a piece of rotten wood.
And then in verse eight, God makes a really interesting statement.
He says, Joel, lay your hand on him. Remember the battle and never do it again?
I guess if you laid your hand on a crocodile with all of the fierceness of that creature and you didn’t know what you’re doing.
One of the things you’d probably say is I will never do that again.
Here’s what God is trying to say to job in all of these illustrations who then is able to stand against me, who has preceded me, that I should pay him?
Everything under heaven is mine job. Do you really want to confront me? Isn’t it interesting?
How often when we go through difficult times, we want to blame God for everything we want to hold God responsible for every little detail of our life.
That isn’t to our liking as if the main purpose of God was to keep us all happy job has gone on this tirade against the fairness of God.
And God did not answer him point by point. He just made a statement.
He said, job before you go any further with your arrogant approach to me.
Let me just give you a picture of who I am.
And the best way I can do that is just let you see a little bit of my creative work through this speech from the Almighty God conquers job.
He confronts him, he challenges him, he confounds him and then finally, he conquers him.
And this brings us to the conclusion of this book in one of the most glorious passages in the Bible, in my estimation.
First of all, we come to job’s repentance, job is gonna repent and notice what he says in verses one through six.
And job answered the Lord and said, God I know you can do everything and that no purpose of yours can be withheld from you.
You asked who is this? Who hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand.
Lord, I’ve been talking about something. I didn’t even know what I was talking about.
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Listen, please God and let me speak again.
You said I will question you and you shall answer me. Lord God.
I have heard you by the hearing of my ear, but now my eye sees you and I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.
Jo says, God, I’ve been hearing you with the hearing of my ear.
But now that I had my moment with you and you gave me a picture of who you are.
Now, I see you with my eye and I realize Lord God how insignificant I am in the presence of the creator of the universe.
And I abhor myself and I repent in dust and ashes. Job has gone from silence to submission.
Job has come all this way through all this suffering and through all this anguish and through all these dialogues with all of his questions.
And now he is a place where God wants him to be and by the way where he usually wants us to be bowing before him and worship and saying, Lord shut my mouth.
I am not worthy to be crying out. Against you.
You’re the God of the universe, the heavens and the earth you created from the end and from the beginning, you are God and I repent job does not confess any of the sins that Eli has tried to pin on him.
He does not say any of the things that EFA tells him he should say because he is guiltless of all of these things.
He did not do the things Eliz accused him of.
We notice that God does not condemn job for any sin or any lack of spiritual maturity.
He charges job that he a mere sinful creature has mistakenly and arrogantly asserted that he could come up with a better explanation for what was happening in the world and a better plan for ordering and controlling its affairs.
But he was wrong on both counts and he had to learn that lesson the hard way.
Therefore, he said I repent in dust and ashes job learned what we all have to learn along the way.
The source of our problem is not God. It’s not other people.
We are the source of our problems.
And the problem within us is one that only God can cure. We’re incapable of handling these problems.
We must place them in the loving hands of God.
When I was growing up, we used to sing a little spiritual that went like this.
It’s not the preacher nor the deacon, but it’s me o Lord standing in the need of prayer. Job.
Got to that place. We quit looking around at his friends.
He quit blaming God and he said, I repent in Dustin ashes. Lord God, it’s me.
It’s my spirit, my arrogance, that’s on trial here, not you.
And the next thing that happens after he repents is there’s a reconciliation.
Job’s reconciliation begins in verse seven.
And so it was after the Lord had spoken these words to job that the Lord said to ele as the Timon, my wrath is aroused against you and your two friends for you have not spoken of me.
What is right as my servant job has now therefore take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant job and offer up for yourselves a burn offering.
And my servant job will pray for you for I will accept Him lest I deal with you according to your folly because you have not spoken of me.
What is right as my servant job has.
So the team and Bill had the shoe height and so far the namo went and did as the Lord commanded them for the Lord had accepted job.
Now watch this of all of job’s friends, Eliz was the oldest.
And so God addresses his remarks to Efa.
God was angry with job’s friends because they had misrepresented God to job.
They had told job things about God that weren’t true when job was so weak and so full of suffering.
That he could not respond in order to make a covering for their sins.
God told them to take seven bulls and seven rams and go to Job’s house and offer a burnt offering for themselves.
If they would do that, says God, job, the servant of God would become their intercessor and he would pray for them and while God wouldn’t recognize them, he’d recognize job.
Now, the interesting thing about this, if you do your homework on this passage, friends, is this the size of the burnt offerings required of the three friends is almost unbelievable an offering of seven bullocks and seven rams was ordained for the entire nation of Israel’s sin.
And such a sacrifice on behalf of three men is totally staggering and shows you how upset God was with job’s counselors because they had come to job in a time of need and they had given him bad counsel that did not represent the heart of God, which reminds all of us who do any counseling whatsoever.
We do well, to make sure our words reflect the word of God, not just our own opinion.
How many of you know that sometimes when people come and they’re filled with sorrow and suffering, we have a tendency to give them our wisdom.
Maybe it’s old lives fables, mixed a little bit with the scripture and sometimes instead of helping them, we lead them further into sorrow and sadness.
In verse nine, we are told that job did pray for them.
And the Lord accepted the prayer of job on behalf of his friends and restored his three friends to himself and reconciled them to job.
Now, they were not his frenemies any longer now, they were his friends.
So when God said to job, pray for your friends and you will be restored, what happened was Job, prayed for his friends.
And that was the evidence that job’s heart was no longer filled with any resentment or bitterness toward his friends.
And the result of that was that job could not only forgive his friends but completely experience the forgiveness of God for himself.
If you’ve got bitterness and resentment against somebody, maybe in the church or out of the church, you wonder why there seems to be a cloud over your head.
The only way you’re going to get out from under that cloud is to ask God to take the bitterness and the resentment away.
Maybe it’s a spouse, maybe it’s a first husband or a second wife or whatever.
Maybe it’s Children who have not been faithful to you as parents. I don’t know what it is.
But if you want to go through your whole life with the misery of resentment, hanging around your neck, you can do it or you can ask God to give you a spirit of forgiveness and go by faith and obedience and forgive those people and watch what God will do in your life.
He will give you back a sense of peace and joy. Job’s repentance and his reconciliation.
And now notice the finality of the story is Job’s restoration.
And let me just say to you, we started in chapter one, we’ve come the whole circle of all these 42 chapters.
We get to the end of chapter 42. And it’s almost like here’s the opening scene again. Watch what happens.
God restored Job’s friends verse 11 and all those who had been job’s acquaintances before came to him and ate food with him in his house.
And they consoled job and comforted him for all the adversity that the Lord had brought upon him.
All of job’s acquaintances gathered in Job’s house and they had a party and they welcomed job back to society and they feasted in his house.
Job, got his friends back. God restored his friends and then here’s good news. God restored his finances.
When you read these verses, you discover that job started out with 7000 sheep and he ended up with 14,000.
He started out with 3000 camels and he ended up with 6000.
He started out with 500 yoke of oxen.
They were all taken away, but he ends up with 1000 yoke of oxen.
He started out with 500 female donkeys and he ended up with 1000 female donkeys.
God gave job back twice as much as he lost. Exactly.
So he got his beginning back, he got his stock back, he got his finances back.
He was ready to start over. And then here’s probably the best news of all. God restored his family.
Verse 11 and verses 13 to 15.
Then all of his brothers and all of his sisters came to him and ate food with him in his house and they consoled job and comforted him for all the adversity that the Lord had brought upon him.
He also had seven sons and three daughters and he called the name of the first Jemima, the name of the second Isiah, the name of the third Karen Hapu.
And in all the land were found no women so beautiful as the daughters of job and their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers.
Now, the final picture of job is a mirror of the first picture we saw of him back in chapter one, he’s gathered with his extended family, his 10 new Children and some have said, whoops, wait a minute, God did not restore to job twice what he lost.
He only got 10 Children back and he should have gotten 20.
Well, first of all, you got to understand how old job is right now and we all know why old people, why grand parents don’t have Children, they just have grandchildren who can come and go and give you some rest in between.
But don’t go there. Listen to this job. Had 10 Children in heaven.
And God gave him 10 more on earth.
When job’s Children died back in the second chapter, he didn’t lose them.
They went to the arms of Jesus and now God just gave him 10 more to enjoy while he was on this earth.
How many Children did job? Had he had 2010 in heaven and 10 on earth for all of you who have lost loved ones?
Don’t you ever say I lost my son. I lost my wife.
If you know where somebody is, they’re not lost. Amen. They’re in heaven, they’re in heaven with the father.
And then we’re told that job’s three daughters. Listen to this.
I don’t know if his first three daughters were ugly, but I know I know his last three were the most beautiful women in the land.
And here’s something you need to note.
You remember back in the early chapters when they were having a party on the birthdays of all the Children and the parties were always held in the homes of the sons.
And it made the comment that they would invite the daughters to these parties.
What that was all about was in those days, a woman did not have any standing in the family.
She could not get an inheritance, only the sons could inherit.
It was a wonderful message in the early chapters that these boys that job reared, loved their sisters enough that when they had an appointed day, they invited their sisters to the party.
But now we’re at the end of the story and notice what it says and Job gave an inheritance to his daughters.
Whoa. Job has come a long way. He’s come a long way. Now.
He sees all of God’s Children and almost reflects the verses of the New Testament that in Jesus Christ, there is neither male nor female, there’s neither bond nor free, there’s neither Jew nor gentiles, but we are all one in Christ.
So job gave his three daughters some cool names.
If you’re looking for a name for a girl that’s about to be born.
Here are the three names he gave them peace. Fragrance and beauty. What names for some girls?
I mean, that name says a lot about the person, doesn’t it?
Finally, we come to God’s personal dealing with job himself. God restored his friends. God restored his finances.
God restored his family and finally, God restored his favor. Verses 16 and 17.
After this job lived 140 years and saw his Children and grandchildren for four generations and job died old and full of days after his repentance and restoration job lived 140 years longer.
In other words, he probably lived to be 210 years old.
140 years after the tragedies, 70 years before the tragedies, the life span of job was not unusual for the patriarchal age.
And for this period of time, many of these men of old lived to be over 200 and four times.
In these verses, God calls job a special Old Testament name. He says job, my servant, my servant. Job.
If you have a AAA pension to underline your Bible, you might want to underline those verses where those little statements are made.
There’s four of them within a period of just two verses. Job had become the servant of God.
And how did he serve God? He served God through his suffering, did ever stop.
And think that maybe some of the suffering God allows in our lives is an opportunity for us to fellowship with the sufferings of Jesus Christ and to serve Almighty God.
Sometimes people come to me with all of their challenges and I might say to them, you know, God has trusted you with an awful lot.
Sometimes God trusts us with stuff, doesn’t He? And we serve him through our suffering.
If the doubling principle applied to job’s age, then he must have been 70 when the story began.
And God allowed him to live twice as many years after the tragedy.
But when we are told that he lived to be old and full of years, that’s an old testament idiom.
That means he lived a rich, full life all the way to the edge.
It’s the dream of every one of us that we could have that joy to live a rich, full life all the way to the edge.
I must confess to you men and women that the conclusion of the Book of Job is as much of a puzzle to me as much of the book of Job.
Many theologians have tried to sum up the book and I’ve read a lot of their summaries and some of them I don’t get.
But in my study for this message over these last several weeks, I came across a little bit of information from a poet by the name of Archibald MacLeish.
And he has presented this application of the book of Job, which I think is the best I’ve ever read.
Listen carefully. Job is given all that he had before twice over.
Not only is job, given his life again, listen, job accepts his life again.
The man who has cried out to God for death, who has begged over and over to die, who has regretted the womb that bore him and yearned never to have been never to have breathed the air or seen the light.
This man accepts his life again, accepts to live his life again.
Take back his wife again, beget new Children mortal as those others and risk himself upon the very hazards on which before his hopes had been wrecked.
Job accepts to live his life again.
In spite of all that he knows of life and in spite of all that he knows now of himself.
And perhaps that is the simple truth we should carry away from job today.
You who are here today, who have been hurt you who have gone through a painful and devastating divorce.
You who have lost your dearest and best friend, you who look at life and all the work and toil that has been reduced now to not enough to make it the rest of the way.
If job after all he suffered can begin again to live life in the same places where he lost it.
If he can continue to trust a God who did not speak to him for all the time of his terrible trial, if job can keep going, in fact, be restored to twice what he had before, so can we so can we some of you have had a tough year.
The Book of Job has been what you’ve needed during this time.
But now it’s time for you to accept life again.
Now it’s time for you to stand up and say yes, I was hurt, but I will not allow it to push me into the background.
I will not refuse to live my life.
I will pick up my life maybe at the very place where I lost it and I will embrace it and live it to the fullest for the glory of God.
If jo can do it, I can do it.
And it’s my prayer for you that as you think about this story, this man who proved to us what happens when integrity meets adversity, you will pray that God will give you the integrity for whatever adversity you may be facing.
To take the next step forward and say this has been a rough few days, but my God has not changed.
I still trust him. I still worship him. I still love him by his grace.
I will walk with him and it will be said of me.
There is my servant and put your name in the blank. Hallelujah.
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