Sometimes the improbable, the unlikely, the unexpected, and the “that could never happen” happens. Which is why God has given us the story of a man named Job.
Through the book of Job, we get a sideline pass to the life of a man whose life doesn’t make sense. He’s a stand-out guy in nearly every area of life, and yet life falls apart for him at every turn. Why? Because Job’s story will be, if it isn’t already, your story.
At a certain point in life, the bottom will fall out. The death of a loved one, job loss, disease, physical injuries, loss of mental capacities, betrayal, loss of possessions, or something of the sort will happen to you. It will not make sense, and you will not be able to fix it. And the book of Job comes along and asks each of us this question: What will you do when you can’t fix it? How will you respond when life doesn’t make sense?
That is why I think we need the book of Job. It is a book for people who eventually discover that life doesn’t always work the way we thought it would. It is a book for people with questions they cannot answer and problems they cannot solve. And as we begin, here are four things I think you need to know about it.
1. It’s Confusing
Many commentators and biblical scholars call Job one of the most difficult books in the Bible to interpret because it has so many confusing elements to it. For instance, there is debate over whether Job was a real person or not. The book never tells us exactly when Job lived. Other historical books in the Bible usually tell us that so-and-so lived in the reign of such-and-such king, giving us an indication of when the events took place. Not Job.
All we are told is that he is from the land of Uz. We’re not even sure if Job was his actual name. His name in Hebrew means “hated” or “persecuted,” which leads some to believe it was a nickname given to him, but we don’t know. The only other places Job is mentioned in the Bible are Ezekiel 14 and James 5, where his story is referenced as an example of perseverance.
Then the book begins with what appears to be God making a deal with Satan. The first two chapters of Job are bizarre. A figure named Satan appears before God, challenges Job’s faithfulness, and God appears to allow him to bring incredible suffering into Job’s life. There is a lot going on in those opening chapters, but at first glance, it is a confusing dialogue.
And it doesn’t necessarily get easier from there. Most of the story is about Job and his friends trying to figure out what God is doing in Job’s life. After chapter after chapter of questioning and wrestling with God, God finally speaks. And when He does, He spends several chapters asking Job questions.
My point is this: the book of Job is confusing. Which is probably why many people never read it. We assume that confusing means inaccessible, and that if I can’t immediately understand something, it must not have much for me. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Because as confusing as Job can be, it is also incredibly relatable.
2. It’s Relatable
The Apostle Paul told the young pastor Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful.” In other words, the Bible is not like one of those textbooks you were given in school that you HAD to use, but wasn’t actually USEFUL in your everyday life. The Bible is a book God has given us that is pregnant with meaning and application for our lives. And that includes a strange and ancient book like Job.
In Romans 15, Paul tells us that the Old Testament was written and preserved throughout history so that it could “teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.” Which means the book of Job is meant to teach us how to live life well over the long haul without losing hope. And man, which one of us doesn’t need that? Because if we’re honest, there are moments and seasons of life where we wonder, “What’s the point? How am I supposed to keep going?”
Job is a guy who can relate. His life went from what felt like a dream to what felt like a nightmare. On several occasions, he wanted to give up. In Job 3:11 he asks, “Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?” In Job 7:16 he says, “I despise my life; I do not want to live forever. Leave me alone; my days have no meaning.”
Again and again, the book of Job shows us a man who was so crushed and overwhelmed by life that he wanted to cease to live, and yet he persevered. At the end of the book, Job experienced God’s redemptive grace in a way he never had before. That is why the book of Job is meant to give us hope for when we suffer. And you may think, “But I’m not suffering right now, so why do I need Job?” I would say two things: You ARE suffering, you just may not call it that, and you WILL suffer.
Some suffering happens simply because we live in a broken world. Your body gets sick. Your car breaks down. You stub your toe, wake up with a toothache, don’t play on the team much because you’re not as athletic as other people, or someone eats the last cookie in the cookie jar before you get there. Each of us experiences the brokenness of our world in little ways every single day, and it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault. It’s simply part of living in a world that is not the way God intended it to be.
Other suffering is caused by our own choices. Sometimes, if we’re honest, we are the reason life is hard. We spend money we don’t have and then feel the stress of debt. We neglect a relationship and wonder why we’ve grown apart, lose our temper and damage someone’s trust, or choose sin and discover that it produces suffering in our lives and the lives of those we love. Not all suffering is our fault, but sometimes it is.
Then there is suffering caused by other people. A spouse walks away. A parent says something that stays with you for decades. A coworker lies about you, someone you trusted betrays you, or a drunk driver crosses the center line. Sometimes another person’s selfishness, sin, brokenness, or even carelessness spills over into our lives, and we end up carrying pain caused by a decision we never made.
And then there is suffering we simply cannot explain. Someone gets a horrible diagnosis even though they were healthy and took care of themselves. The couple who desperately wants a child can’t get pregnant while someone else seems to get pregnant effortlessly. The opportunity you prayed about disappears, the person you prayed for dies anyway, or the accident happens at exactly the wrong moment. In those moments, you search for the lesson, the mistake, the person to blame, or some explanation that will make everything add up, and sometimes you won’t find one.
That is exactly the kind of suffering Job experiences. He doesn’t know why his life has fallen apart, and for most of the book, God doesn’t tell him. Job is relatable because every one of us will eventually encounter things we cannot fix or explain. And we all need a model, an example, of what to do when we feel overwhelmed and crushed by life.
3. It’s Eye-Opening
If I had to summarize the central question of the book of Job in one verse, it would be Job 1:9: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” In other words, did Job only marry God for His money? Is he secretly only following God because God has helped him live a comfortable life? Would Job still want God if God was all he had left?
Eric Ortlund puts the issue this way: “Will human beings continue in a relationship with God in which all they gain from the relationship is God?” That is the uncomfortable question Job forces us to ask ourselves. Do I love God for God, or do I love God for what He gives me? And the only way we’ll ever REALLY know the answer to that question is when we suffer.
It is when things are stripped away that we find out if we love God for WHO HE IS or for WHAT HE GIVES. In this way, suffering is both a test and preparation. It’s a test because when I lose things I love, I find out what kind of faith I actually have. But it’s also preparation because suffering prepares me for the day when I lose everything.
Because there will be a day when you WILL lose everything. You will die. And on that day, everything you have in this life will be gone. Your money, your possessions, your career, your accomplishments, even the breath in your lungs. Ultimately, all you will have is God.
And in that sense, suffering prepares us for eternity. It loosens our grip on things we were always going to lose and teaches us to cling to the One we can never lose. The things we tend to build our lives around were never going to last forever anyway. Suffering has a way of exposing that and showing us what we are actually trusting in. Which means suffering, and the book of Job, asks us now the question death will eventually ask us all: If all I have is God, is God enough?
4. It’s Hopeful
While the book of Job is filled with grief and sadness, it doesn’t end that way. At the end of the story, in Job 42, we find that God redeems Job. There are some things Job never gets back, like his children, the time he spent suffering, or even the level of relationship he had with his friends previously. But God blesses him. To the point that the writer tells us in verse 12, “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the former part.”
But the greatest blessing Job received wasn’t material. It was spiritual. Through all of the tragic events that took place in Job’s life, he got to the other side of his suffering and said in Job 42:5, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” Job’s suffering enabled him to experience God in a way he never had before. His provision, His care, His power, and His love.
Thousands of years after the book of Job was written, James was writing to a group of Christians who were suffering and overwhelmed by life, and he pointed them back to Job. In James 5:11 he writes, “You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” James looks back over Job’s entire story and summarizes what God was doing with these words: The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
Why? Because Job’s suffering wasn’t the end of Job’s story. God was still at work even when Job couldn’t see Him, couldn’t understand Him, and at times could barely hold on to Him. When you look at the whole story, what you ultimately discover is not a cruel God playing games with Job’s life, but a God who is “full of compassion and mercy.” And nowhere do we see that more clearly than in Jesus.
When you get to the New Testament, you meet another righteous sufferer. Someone who had done nothing wrong, yet suffered tremendously. Someone who was rejected by His friends, falsely accused, stripped of everything He had, and cried out in anguish to God. Like Job, Jesus experienced suffering that, from the perspective of the people watching it happen, made absolutely no sense. But there is one enormous difference between Job and Jesus: Job didn’t know why he was suffering. Jesus did.
The good news of Christianity is that Jesus willingly entered into suffering for us. On the cross, Jesus took upon Himself the sin, brokenness, judgment, and death of this world so that suffering and death would not get the final word in our lives. And then three days later, God raised Him from the dead. That is ultimately where our hope comes from. Our hope is not that if we trust God, everything we lose will eventually be given back to us in this life.
Job himself didn’t get everything back. There may be things in your life right now that you cannot explain, and there may be losses that will never be restored on this side of eternity. But our hope is that because Jesus suffered, died, and rose again, our stories do not end in suffering, but resurrection. Because Jesus’ story did not end in suffering, yours doesn’t have to either.
The story of Job reminds us that if you are walking with God and your life feels painful and out of control today, what you are experiencing right now is not where your story ends. God may be at work in ways you cannot see, understand, or explain. So keep trusting Him and keep holding on to Him. Because one day, you too will be able to say with Job and all of God’s people: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”
This is the shorter version of a sermon I preached at Wabash Friends Church. You can watch or listen to the entire sermon here: