Job begins and ends after the pattern that Jesus speaks of, that the Old Testament anticipates him in his suffering and in his glory. We saw the sufferings anticipated in the first two chapters and throughout the book, and now comes the glory as the Lord restores the fortunes as Job returns out from under the curse.

Outline:
I. The Story
II. The Significance (42:7)
III. The Sacrifice (42:8-9)
IV. The Superlative Blessings (42:10-17)

Let’s pray. Gracious God and Heavenly Father, we come again before you, awed at your love and the magnitude of your mercy towards us. We thank you for life in Christ. We pray that we would at this time grow, not just for enriching our minds, but ultimately that you would be glorified and that Christ would be magnified in all that he’s done to accomplish our salvation. We pray that we’ve lived that life as you evermore conform us to the image of that same Savior, Jesus Christ. We ask it in his name. Amen. Turn in your Bibles to Job 42. Before we read Job 42, though, I need to read Deuteronomy 30, 1 through 6. But we’re going to camp out on Job chapter 42. But first, we’re going to read Deuteronomy 30, 1 through 6. There’s a little phrase in Job. 42, where it says, the Lord restored the fortunes of Job. That is a technical term in the Old Testament. It means God literally returned the captivity of Job. And it has to do with returning those who are under curse to come back to the Lord’s blessing. And the first occurrence of that phrase is in Deuteronomy, which you would expect because much of Job intersects with Deuteronomy and structures a lot that’s going on in it. So in chapter 30 of Deuteronomy, we read of the curse sanction and the blessing sanction that is restored to them as the Lord, again, this very technical Hebrew phrase, restores the fortunes or literally return the captivity. Deuteronomy 30, one through six. And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I’ve set before you and you call them to mind among all the nations for the Lord, your God has driven you and returned to the Lord, your God, you and your children obey his voice and all that I command you today with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord, your God will restore your fortunes. There’s the phrase. And have mercy on you. He will gather you again from all the peoples for the Lord. Your God has scattered you. So you see they had blessing Israel had blessing reaching its high point with Solomon David and the wisdom literature coming in that period and then They continued to depart from God until they were scattered amongst the nations. But then the Lord came back and restored their fortunes. He brought them back. Ezra and Nehemiah, the books that speak of the return of the remnant. And that’s what Deuteronomy is forecasting here. The Lord your God will restore your fortunes. He will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you and from there he will take you. And the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. And the Lord your God will put all these curses on your foes and enemies who persecuted you. Now we turn to Job chapter 42, the ending of the book. Job begins and ends after the pattern that Jesus speaks of, that the Old Testament anticipates him in his suffering and his glory. We saw the suffering part in Job 1 and 2 and throughout the book. But now in 42, here comes the glory as he restores the fortunes, as he returns from captivity, from out from under the curse. 42 verse 7, After the Lord had spoken these words to Job, the Lord said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves. And my servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly, for you have not spoken to me what is right as my servant Job has. So Eliphaz, the Temanite, and Bildad, the Shuhite, and Zophar, the Nemethite, went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer. Now here’s the end of it, all right? Verse 10, and the Lord restored the fortunes of Job. There it is. There’s the technical phrase found in Deuteronomy and elsewhere, the prophets, Psalm 126, et cetera. The Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. And then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed him sympathy and they comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. And each of them gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold. And the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. He had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. So if you notice how it began, that’s double of everything he had in the beginning. The latter days, the eschatological days of Job are far better than the earlier. He had also seven sons and three daughters, which is the same number, and he called the name of the first daughter, Jemima, and the name of the second, Kezia, and the name of the third, Karen Hapush. And in all the land, there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters. And their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers. And after this, Job lived 140 years and saw his sons and his sons’ sons four generations. And Job died an old man and full of days. I call this Job’s happy heavenly ending. So let’s pray. Holy Father, we do ask now that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that has given us this word, would illumine us now in its fulfillment in your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and in us, who belong to Christ. and have the wonderful privilege of looking to him as our righteousness, looking to him as our curse bearer, and looking to him as the one who has paved the way into eternal communion in heavenly glory. For these we thank you and pray now these requests of illumination in thy word in Jesus name. Amen. So I want to just kind of quickly review that we’re headed toward chapter 42, and we want to get an idea about how the book itself, you know, moves along to reach this glorious ending. Now, as we’ve already mentioned, the book opens up with these two great trials of Job. The Lord’s heat comes into his life. And the book of Job doesn’t shy away. As you notice several times, it’s all the evil the Lord brought into his life. Rushish Rushduni, a theologian that has passed away that you may have heard of, he said, Job made me a Calvinist. Because in this book, you see, without any question, who’s in control of the show. The Lord is. And that is the point, the premier point, when we talk about God’s sovereignty as being of a Calvinistic stripe. As the book opens up, we see that Job is presented as this righteous man, fears God, he’s blameless, turns away from evil. And Satan calls into question his sincerity. It’s, you know, he’s just saying, look, it’s religious theater and you’ve given him a good deal for performing so well. So Satan is kind of saying that both sides of the covenant transaction are insincere. Job’s insincere for the theatrical display of religion and God’s insincere for rewarding his theatrical performance. And so he says, well, let’s, you know, turn up the heat and find out, you know, the truth of the matter. Does Job serve God for no reason? There’s that word, no reason. Same thing that appears with regard to God a cursing joke for no reason. It’s a good thing to serve God for no reason. In other words, you’re not serving because you’re getting something. You’re getting the deal if I just do this. It’s back to the Augustine idea. Do you love God and use things, or do you love things and use God to continue to hold on to them? And so it’s bringing the heat in that’s going to reveal the true character of Job. First he was dispossessed of his possessions. He was dispossessed of his posterity. in that first trial, and then in the second trial, his person then was drilled from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, again, drawing from the very description of the curse sanctioned Deuteronomy 28, to turn up the heat even higher, Satan arguing that now it’ll really come out that he’s not all, that he’s cracked up to be. And from those first two chapters, then the heat is on. Job is being tested, and his three friends come to comfort him, to care about his life, and to help him out. And we find that the three friends are not all that useful to him. In Chapter 3, by the way, Job, as he’s sitting on this ash heap, just says, I wish I were dead. I wish they would have carried me from womb to tomb. It would have been much better than having to undergo all this. God has hedged me in, and there’s no light with regard to the way out. And that phrase, hedged in, is what Satan had used earlier saying, well, God has hedged you in with blessing. And now Job is saying, well, God has hedged me in with cursing. And he’s giving me no light on the situation on how to escape. And then out of that, as we’ve seen, we have half the book with this ping pong game between Job and the three. And as it went back and forth for 21, 22 chapters, right? You say, wow, that’s a lot of scripture. given just to this one question under review, are you really righteous? I mean, come on. No way. It can’t possibly be. If you’re righteous and undergoing the curse sanction, then God’s unjust. How can you suggest such a thing? Of course, Job fires back and says, yeah, I know. God’s holy. His covenant is right. But however, I’m righteous. I don’t have a single day of reproach in my heart, you know, to cough up a confession to try to turn things around. And it’s just kind of interesting to see, you know, here’s Job. I mean, he’s on this ash heap and he’s sustaining this verbal ping-pong game where, you know, he’s got to answer each one. There’s three on one side, they get the rest while the other guy talks, but Job has to stay engaged all along. And finally it’s them that wear out, you know, chapter 26. You know, we saw with Bildad, it’s the shortest chapter, and you can tell that they’re gassed and they can’t seem to get Job to come up with a confession of sin at all. After Bildad, you know, runs out of steam, then Job speaks from chapters 26 and 27. 28 is questionable whether that’s an authorial insertion, which I would say it is. Some think it’s Job still speaking. At the end of the day, 28 is distinctive because it’s a talk about wisdom. You know, where do we get the wisdom to unravel this Gordian knot here of Job’s situation? Where’s the wisdom to be found? But prior to that, chapters 26 and 27. You know, Job is very sarcastic about them. You guys are about as useful as a hare and a biscuit with regard to the kind of counsel that you bring to me. I’ve heard all this stuff before. I used to teach this in Sunday school myself, but here I am now. As far as I can tell, I’m cursed and righteous. And that just doesn’t sit well with anybody. And their advice to him is one where Job could only say, where’d you get this stuff, man? You guys are just top of the line philosophers, as he just sarcastically addresses them in chapter 26. And then in chapter 27, again, as I mentioned before, where he just digs down and says, look, I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to, you know, be the Catholic school boy in the confessional and drum up some, you know, confessions. It’ll satisfy you and hopefully turn things around. I’m not going to do it. I’m going to stand and hold on to my righteousness. Not a day in life has gone by where my heart reproaches me, which is, you know, an amazing claim. and statement on Job’s part. Then chapter 29 is the chapter where Job says, well, here’s how my life used to be. I was walking in butter. I was respected by men. I had God as my friend. Chapter 30 says, and now, radical change suddenly from how it was to now. Now I’m in the stocks. I’m hedged in by God. He’s no longer my friend but my adversary and won’t explain to me what’s going on. And men look at me in horror. and run away thinking I’m, you know, life’s biggest loser, not the greatest guy that was in the gate handling the legal problems of the city. And then in Chapter 31, he says, well, look, this radical change beside is not due to my having sinned, as I’ve argued all along. And what more can he say than what he has said? Well, he can bring an affidavit of a covenant document supported by 14 oaths of self-meldiction to his own righteousness, which is radical, radical stuff. There’s nothing else like this in scripture. And signs his name, may God himself give me his indictments. And if God would reply to me with like document as I’ve given this document, this verbal document, as it is to him, he said I would take it, those indictments, and I would wear it as a robe and a crown into his presence where he and I would go over all my steps together, get a reverse verdict from God. So Job is highly confident in his own righteousness and very dialed in along with his friends about God’s covenantal dealings with people and leaves him with a huge question mark and leaves his friends utterly flummoxed and given up in trying to retrieve him. And he ends, chapter 31 ends with, these are the words of Job, they’ve ended. And then steps in the young man Elihu. Elihu disagrees with everybody. Elihu wants to help Job out though. And so he steps in, and the bottom line with Elihu, as you read through it and ponder what Elihu is getting at, is he basically argues that God is so great, that God is so unfathomable, that Job, he says, you cannot bring your case to him because of darkness. I mean, Job, you just don’t know enough about what’s going on to, quote, set your case before him and get him to work the other side of the table. And so Elihu concludes with God operating on this very high level in comparison to us. And it should cause us pause. and suggests there may be a number of reasons why he does what he does, but we can’t know that anyway. 3719, which is at the end of Elihu’s monologue. He says, teach us what we shall say to him. We cannot draw up our case because of darkness. And then he goes on to say in verse 23, the Almighty, we cannot find him. Can’t penetrate, can’t sort him all out. He is great in power, justice and abundant righteousness. He will not violate. Therefore men fear him. He does not regard any who are wise in their own conceit. Men fear him because he’s so great. And he’s not always understandable. And so he doesn’t come crashing in completely on Job’s party. He does put some question marks over it. But he’s a very reasonable forerunner for the coming of God. The storm cloud theophany is how that’s often described. It says, the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, chapter 38. Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man. I will question you, and you make it known to me. So God comes and says, look, your approach is darkening things, not bringing any light upon it. Now, gird up your loins. And this is the ancient belt wrestling contest between God and Job. So we already know who’s going to win this belt wrestling contest. But there’s two things that God does in this is he parades the creation before Job with essentially asking him, do you have the wisdom to run this creation? Of course, Job is, hmm. Then he goes on, after getting that answer, to say, well, good, you don’t have the wisdom to run the creation. Do you have the power that it takes to correct the evil that’s embedded in the creation as embodied by Leviathan, the great dragon? And I’m in all the way with those commentators that see that this Leviathan is a guise for Satan. If you read through Leviathan, the description, hands down, it’s a fire-breathing dragon. Now, whether that was an actual creature or not, it’s up for grabs. I mean, God did create a little beetle who had two compartments, and when that little beetle blows out of his hiney, those two gases that are in those two compartments of his body, flame shoots out. So if God can do that with a beetle, Maybe there was a fire-breathing dragon that existed and it’s beyond just the mythological, beyond the mythological Near East and actually was something that existed. I don’t know. And it doesn’t really matter because at the end of the day, this is a guise for Satan. It’s a picture of being embedded in creation as the evil controlling presence with the question to Job, can you tangle with him and extract him and resolve this? There’s one little line here I just want to, by way of a tangent, because I think this is very interesting to draw your attention to. In 41-43, the next to the last verse about this in this chapter in 41. It says, on earth there is not his like, a creature without fear. I think it’s the King James I think translated, on earth is not his equal. Now if you know mighty fortresses are God, There is a line regarding Satan by Martin Luther, on earth is not his equal. I just want you to know where that came from. Luther understood that Leviathan was a guise for Satan. On earth is not his equal. And so Job answered the Lord in verse chapter 42. And as he answers the Lord, He says, I know that you can do all things, that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You are a great God. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand. I stepped outside some boundaries as a creature before the creator that I should not have. He admits it. Things too wonderful for me which I did not know, which Elihu had clued him into already, preparing him for this dramatic encounter with God. Here and I will speak and I will question you, you will make it known to me that it’s God. I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, now my eye sees you, therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. It’s important for us as we read that and recognize Job being corrected by God, is that Job remains God’s champion. The question is, in this book, is will Job prove to be the God-fearing, blameless, and righteous man that he’s cracked up to be, and that God says he is? The answer to that question is yes. But does Job prove that he’s perfect? No, he’s not Jesus. When his frail humanity is squeezed, fissures begin to show and it begins to crack under the pressure, and thus we have this stumble. And the stumble being that he justified himself, which was fine, he was right, but he did not justify God, which was wrong. And that was the major hiccup. in Job’s defense of himself. But we must, it’s very important that Job’s correction is not something that cancels in any way the reality of his righteousness that God himself argued for. God wins this debate. Satan is defeated by the weakness of a righteous man. And so even though he may be squeezed in this very unusual way of switching the covenantal sanctions of cursing a righteous man for no reason as a test, that throughout you see that Job yells and he complains, but he does not rebel or curse God through the trial. And so he is a type of Christ. A righteous man who bears curses not his own in order, first, to defeat the devil. But there’s more than defeating the devil. Verse 42, or verse 7 of chapter 42 of the section that we referred to is my anger burns against you and against your two friends, for you’ve not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” Again, God’s vindication of Job. Now, if you ever want to go to a commentary or go to a book that’s been written on Job, and you want to know how precisely they’ve understood what’s going on, Just go to this verse. What does this verse mean? And see what they say. Because this is a tell-all. What does the verse mean? The verse means, in all simplicity, one big thing. One big point. Here’s the big point of the debate. What they were saying. What they were arguing for. And in all simplicity, the three friends were arguing, God cannot curse a righteous man. That would render him unjust and a transgressor of his own covenant faithfulness. And Job says, yes, he can. God can curse a righteous man, me. And that’s how they spoke what was wrong of God. That’s how Job spoke, it was right. That is foolishness with regard to the covenant of law, granted. But it is a foolishness that without this foolishness, there is no redemption. It is the redemptive principle. It is a wisdom that exceeds the wisdom of the law. It is the wisdom of the gospel. that Job himself is embodying and arguing for. And so what Job had embodied all along as the righteous bearing God’s curse, he now performs. He now acts out by offering sacrifices to reconcile his friends under wrath, stuck in the realm of law only, and consequently being stuck in the realm of law under God’s judgment. Job then offers sacrifices. What are sacrifices but substitutions that take on God’s judgment in our place. what Job embodies he now ritually performs to reconcile his friends to God. Seven bulls and seven rams because of their sinful speech. Now it’s interesting, you can map out or show the outline of the book of Job and match up various beginnings and endings. This is one of them. You had seven days and seven nights when they were silent. Now they have to offer seven rams and seven bulls for their speech. And they match up the beginning and the ending of the book. A lot of things like that. You can find this It’s called a chiastic outline of the book by a guy named David Dorsey. And if your pastor doesn’t have it, I don’t know if it’s in his library. Do you have it in the library yet? Literary Structures of the Old Testament by David Dorsey. You got it. All right. I always like to say if your pastor doesn’t have it, this is the gift to get him. He’s already got it. But anyway, it’s in there you get this chiastic arrangement of the book where you see this beautiful picture of its literary structure. But Job then is able to reconcile them, you see. He is the righteous one that has spoken rightly, that God curses the innocent in order to clear the guilty. And Job thus embodies the sacrificial curse principle all along. And he offers these seven bulls and seven rams. And God’s wrath is removed. And the friends are reconciled to God. And then it said, the Lord It said, verse nine, Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar went and did what the Lord had told them, and the Lord accepted Job’s prayer. Now, if you can remember when the Lord Jesus Christ was offering himself as a sacrifice, his prayer. Father what? Forgive them. He was providing the very forgiveness he’s granted. This is Job is in the course of offering these sacrifices, he prays for them. Forgive them. May it be applied to them. And then it said in verse 10, from there in verse 10, the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, returned the captivity out from under cursing, now into blessing. You see, when he had prayed for his friends, the Lord gave twice as much as he had before. And we can see this in all these different ways of The Lord’s superlative blessings coming in upon the heels of this great sacrifice, this great conclusion where Job himself, what he had embodied all along, now is seen in a sacrificial ritual. Double blessing. Zechariah 9, 12, he says, I will restore to you double, using both of those words. I will return to you double. Double exceeds Eden. It exceeds the land. Double exceeds where Job was at in the beginning under God’s blessing. So we’re moving, we’re moving, you see the story’s moving from the earthly blessing to higher blessing. This is consummate, heavenly blessing is where we’re moving to. And as you move into this, you just get more and more of it. His brothers and sisters who had all known him before and all had intimate dealings with him, they come and do it. They eat bread in his house with him. A beautiful picture of our Lord Jesus Christ and us as we gather to him to eat bread with him in his house in the heavenly regions when we commune with him as his people. What a picture you see of the in-gathering of all those who are intimate with Christ, who know him, all his people. They’re drawn upward into his heavenly house to commune with him. And they gave him money. They gave him a gold ring. They gave him gold and they gave him rings. They tithe as they are in grateful presence of his company and cognizant, right, of his cross. They bread with him and they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. like Zechariah 12, 13, they shall gaze upon him and they shall mourn. They shall see his wounds and they shall mourn. There you have that picture of the people of God coming to the rich wounds visible, cognizant of, and the love of Christ and of communing with him, loving him out of a heart of sorrowful love, not self-reprisal sorrow, but loving sorrow. So that the latter days, it goes on to say, of Job are more blessed than the beginning in verse 12. 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yucca foxes, 1,000 female dogs. All those are doubled from chapter one, as Job is initially presented. And he also has his seven sons and three daughters replaced, but not increased in number. which I think is showing that in glory individuals remain individuals in glory. And he called the name of the first daughter Jemima. It’s from the word peace. Her name means peace. The second one, her name is Kizia. And that is from a plant that is derivative of a perfume. So you have the idea of this perfume filling the atmosphere as seen in her name. But this third one, Karen Hapush, is referenced in Isaiah 54. Isaiah 54, it speaks of the people of God being like jewels set in antimony. That’s this Karen Hapush. In other words, antimony was a dark eye shadow that they wore back then to accent the eyes. Light, like jewels, are set in antimony. Isaiah 54. Of course, that whole text of Isaiah 54 of the jewels of God’s people are fulfilled in Revelation 22. where the city, which is the bride, who has the glory of God, the light of God, are signified by the jewels of various gems that are light refracting gems of a kaleidoscopic coloring. of the end point of the people of God as being people of light and of glory. And Karen Hapoosh has these popping eyes. set in antimony, and the perfuming and the peacefulness, the three ladies bring forward, you see, accent, you might say, bring coloration ahead of time of the bride of Christ, ultimately, that will be enjoying and reflecting the consummation in heaven when Jesus Christ returns for his people. And so you get this Old Testament typological picture of what is ultimately fulfilled in heavenly glory of Job being with his people, communing with them, being close to them, being restored above and beyond anything that had been experienced as God’s blessing in this life. And it says that Job lived 140 years, saw his sons and his sons’ sons, four generations. Job died an old man and full of days. You have all this Old Testament language of long life in the land. This is the great blessing of God in the Old Testament for the righteous. They receive long life in the land. And that’s typological language for eternal life. And this is what Job ended his life with. He lived an old man. He lived long, 140 years, right? Again, that’s double what the Psalm 91 or Psalm 90 counts as the typical life of man on earth, 70 years. This is 140. So he’s double, again, it’s a double. He saw his son’s sons for four generations. So most of us will grow up, we’ll become grandpas. And then we die. But some will see great-grandchildren. And if you’re really old and on and started early, you might see your great-great. But commonly, you get to be grandpa and that’s the end. You know, you get to 70 years. Job had 140, thus he was four generations, not two generations. and lived an old man. He lived long and full of days. That word full is again used in Psalm 91 regarding the Messiah, who because he loves God and honors God, I will give him long life. I will satisfy him. That’s the word satisfy, that word full. It’s used also in Isaiah 53 with regard to the resurrection of the suffering servant. It’s used also in Deuteronomy, having a long and full, a long and satisfying life. This is all Old Testament language, you see. It’s typological of eternal life. Long, satisfying life, the life of the world to come. These are the latter-day lives. These are eschatological days, consummation days. This is heaven beyond this world. You see, that’s what’s being pictured here at the end of Job. This is this concluding picture as he emerges out from cursed captivity and is restored to even greater, fuller blessing of life, even eternal heavenly life and glory so that Job ends in heaven. From righteous suffering to eternal glory, prefiguring, of course, our Lord Jesus Christ and who he will have gathered around him in that great day. So what are we to take from the book of Job? Well, Job is all about Jesus. the only uniquely righteous man who bears curses not his own, in order to defeat the devil, to mediate at the altar and reconcile sinners under wrath to God’s favor, and to bring them to glory, and in bringing them to glory into rich communion with himself. Jehovah is not about you. You deserve God’s curse. Job didn’t. Job is about Jesus. So if you want to find yourself in Job, then identify with the three friends, their worldly wisdom, their captivity to the law, their being under wrath out of that captivity to law. Friends who need Jesus to bear their curse, to be their righteousness, and thereby bring them into his house of heaven to feast and commune with him. Like those three friends, the answer to God’s burning anger is Jesus’ blood and righteousness. So, come to Jesus. He doesn’t need your help, but you definitely need his help. And it’s a help that, praise God, he can deliver because he delivers it out of a fire-tested righteousness that defeats the devil and opens the door to glory for you and for me. He is the one who is greater than anything we can bring to the table. And He will get us where we wish to go. Eternal communion and satisfied days in glory with Him and God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Amen. So, do we have a little question and answer time afterwards? Yeah, you wanna, any questions, comments, criticisms? And if the criticisms get too hot and heavy, I’ll go out that door. Yeah, yes, Ross. Yeah, definitely not a criticism. So you mentioned the chiastic structure, Joe, and that the center of that chiastic structure was chapter 28, which is talking about wisdom coming from God. Yeah. a little bit of a nastier question. I’m really trying to pin you down unfairly, but would we say, if someone was to say, Job’s about one thing, would we say Job is about Jesus, or would we say that Job is primarily more about wisdom from above? I know it doesn’t need to be one or the other, but just thinking how To answer the question, this is why we had 1 Corinthians 1 read during worship this morning. Job is about the wisdom of the cross. And that wisdom is foolishness with regard to the wisdom of the law. The wisdom of the law instructs us of what? Walk straight, don’t divert. Your future will be great, right? That’s the wisdom of the law. That’s solid wisdom, man. But unfortunately, those who are applying it are fallen, sinful people. So they can hold on to that path as the way to go, but what The wisdom of the cross points us to is God can pour out his sanction of cursing on the very one who has merited and by rights has secured the sanction of blessing because of his righteousness. And that one is Jesus. So yeah, I collapse them into one and the same reality, Christ and his cross, where the righteous bore the curse to reconcile us to God. And that’s why it’s so significant that half the book is doing what? Back and forth. Will this righteousness hold? Will this righteousness hold? And the answer is yes. And that instructs us, doesn’t it, of how important the righteousness of Jesus Christ is against everything else out there that either ignores it or opposes it. And we would say, no, this righteousness is absolutely central to the gospel. Habakkuk 2.4, the just by faith, Shelah. Romans 1.16, the theme of the book of Romans, which is an expose of the gospel itself, is it’s a righteousness that we acquire that is perfect and complete in accordance with the demands of the law that we receive by faith. And therefore, it’s not a small ticket item. It’s a big ticket item, and it shows itself as a big ticket item in the Book of Job by enjoying half the book as a debate as to its strength and integrity. Yes, sir? That was 4133. Let me double-check that. It’s the next to the last verse. Yeah, 4133. It’s translated in various English translations differently. I think it’s the King James that says it just as the hymn. On earth is not his equal. ESV says on earth there is not his like. But as you look for that word in the Hebrew, equal is a better translation. Those translators who chose equal closer to the sense of the Hebrew. And then Job’s daughters, Jemima and Peace? Is that right? And then the next one, Keziah? Jemima, and then Keziah, or Keziah. And then the third one was the startling one, Keren Hapush, which comes from the Hebrew word for antimony, which is an eye makeup that is dark, that causes the light in the eye to pop out. And that’s used in Isaiah 54 with regard to the jewels of God’s city are set in antimony. Same exact word. Yeah. Yeah. So the purpose of antimony is dark, is to give highlight to what is light, to make it more noticeable, visible, glorious. Yeah. Yes, sir. Yeah. I’ve got two. I’ll start with one, and then I’ll weigh in some more. So how would your big picture overview fit in with either early Jewish or second-level Jewish understandings of the book? I think it can be argued that there are several New Testament allusions to the Book of Job, right? Do you find the good resonance between the big picture overview of the interpretation that you’ve settled on with the New Testament allusions? Yeah, they intersect. The New Testament allusions to Job are more practical applications that are drawn from a portion. And they’re not trying to get into what is the hermeneutic that unlocks it. Those references don’t attempt to do that. You have to get to it from another way. And to get to that first question, there’s a guy that A Jewish fellow, and I think he completed his work in the 1990s, as I recall, but he moved to Jerusalem, spent 20 years studying the Book of Job, wrote a book called Deep Things Out of Darkness. I forgot the guy’s name. I know it, but I’m 71 years old and things go in and out of my ears so fast. But anyway, in that book, he’s the one that showed me that those opening afflictions of Job were curse sanctions. Because he was excellent. in tracing interconnected links from one place in Job to somewhere else. And he showed me that those were curse sanctions out of Deuteronomy 28. And also blessings, the blessing of the work of your hands. But as I went through the book and looked it through, this is my conclusion about a learned Hebraist and Jewish scholar of Job. He was Christologically clueless. And that is, from a Christian perspective, that is a cluelessness of eternal weight. And I think that all Jews in whatever effort they make, Job probably falls in line with him. Because I would say, you know, in terms of all past Jewish scholarship, he probably is the premier update 1990s. and the level of scholarship he operated on, the level of sensitivity to Hebrew words and their meanings. I mean, he’s really remarkable. And it was on his deathbed that they presented to him the final copy of the book. So 20 years, he’s sunk. Yeah. John Anderson? Is that the name? No. No. OK. Deep Things Out of Darkness, if you want to look it up. That’s what it is. No, no, that’s not it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keith? And I know it sounds like an elementary question, so I’m asking for my kids. But I’m also curious myself. Is this book supposed to be taken literally, or is it a parable because of the emphasis on Job’s righteousness? How does that deter from his sinfulness? If it’s literally, he’s a man, he would have to repent every single day like we would. So it’s got such a strong emphasis on his righteousness and how that parallels to Christ. How do you clarify that? Yeah, that’s a real bugaboo kind of question. You know, there’s other examples of that. Noah is a righteous man, received God’s favor. Psalm 18, David speaking of his righteousness, uses very pregnant language that, you know, what you know of David, you know that it doesn’t match, right? I mean, you can say, okay, there’s, there’s, you can see certain dimensions of David’s life. He’s a man after God’s own heart. He loved the Lord. He sought the Lord. You see those, but then, but then to take those admirable spirit, raw, redemptive qualities and turn them in to these startling claims to how righteous you’ve been. Right. Uh, there, there’s an incongruity there. So, but then the question becomes, well, why? Why is that? And the answer is… These people are precursors and types of Christ who, in many ways, Christ is peering in through them ahead of time that causes these, you might say, exaggerated or pregnant statements to be made. You know, like in chapter 27, I read this morning, and I referenced it again this afternoon, where it talks about Job’s saying, you know, not a single day does my heart reproach me. You’re going, what? What does that mean? And I think, you know, you got to make a choice here, right? You know, what does that statement, how do you tease that statement out? And I think that’s how you tease it out. I think at the end of the day, insofar that they are vitally connected to Christ, and they are vitally anticipating Christ. Christ is as it is peering in through them ahead of time with their relative sanctification to make it sound like more than what it is. which to me, if you look at it that way, that makes scripture even more Christological than just, oh, the lamb was sacrificed, Jesus is a lamb. You know, those kind of statements even bring it forth with ever more sharpness that Jesus is present, you know, ahead of time. So it’s not a parable. The story of Job is not a parable. It’s not a parable. Yeah. Well, I would want to be able to say it’s typological, right? Like many things are, events, persons, and things of the Old Testament are typological in that they have certain distinctive outstanding characteristics that are ultimately fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And so Job and the story of Job, I would want to take it as a historical event. Does that mean that I read this as a tape recording of what was going on? No. I don’t read this as a tape recording of what was going on. I think there’s editorial freedom under the Holy Spirit that was being employed as Job is anticipating the Lord Jesus Christ and how that comes to pass. I don’t think that should be disturbing to us. I think it just should accent to us evermore that Jesus is the center of the Bible. He’s there and he’s breaking through in a very spiritual way that only God himself could pull off. Yeah, Tony. Yeah, David Wolfers, thank you. Did you know that? Yeah, it is. It’s David Wolfer’s. That’s the name. I don’t recommend it. Very tedious. Except for a couple of chapters, he just has some outstanding stuff. Because it is so Christologically clueless, it’s depressing. I’m just saying, you know. My question is with regard to the history of interpretation of Job. This what? What? Yeah. No, that’s a great question. It really is. That’s such a great question. Everything I’ve read, that I’ve read, and there’s, you know, it’s minuscule compared to what is available to read. What’s out there, generally, people are talking back and forth to each other, right? So if you get in there and just read a good number of things, you’re gonna get a pretty good feel about what’s out there and what’s available. So it’s pretty quick that Christian interpreters of Job are gonna identify Job’s suffering as anticipatory of Christ’s suffering. that here is a man that is innocent, bearing God’s judgment and suffering. And thus, he’s anticipating Christ. So that becomes relatively universal. And I don’t know where the other component intersects, but the other component is I call it reading the Bible about me. That aspect, reading the Bible about me, presses you in to identifying, well, Job is suffering. I suffer. Oh, not as much as Job, but so I can get insights as Job, from the book of Job, that this is God’s special book to us, his people, as a manual to guide us through suffering, so that what Job is going through, I can glean these insights from. That has some usefulness in terms of personal piety and attitude and whatnot, right? You know, like one of the greatest benefits of that is understanding that God is sovereign, right? So if you can finally realize that things didn’t just happen to you in your life, that Job shows you the Lord rules over the good and the evil. and he has a purpose in what he’s doing, all right? So, you know, to take that from the book of Job is kind of a good, a pious insight. But then to keep pressing into the book that this book is somehow provided and that’s what it’s for, that’s what its purpose, you’re not gonna be able to understand, I mean, You know, Job’s insistence upon his own righteousness. Job’s defense in chapter 31. I mean, how can you track this and apply it to yourself? Fourteen oaths of self-meldiction to your own righteousness when you are just trashed by God and man. Is that useful to you? That’s terrorizing to think, OK, this is my way out to really get serious about being a righteous person. And that will be my ticket out of this trial or whatever. I mean, that turns Job into another law. All right? And it doesn’t seem to be contrary to that. Yeah. Yeah. So do you think that there were So, I don’t know when all that stuff got started rolling, but it seems like nobody can extract themselves completely from wanting to identify Job as me. Oh, there’s a guy by the name of Carlisle whose set on Job is like this. And a good friend of mine heard I was going to write a book on Job, so he gave me the whole set, right? He said, no, I want this back, because this was a gift from Joel Beeky. I said, OK, cool. So I started sampling it. You were scraping and scraping and scraping the shards? Oh, where he’s at and where I’m at with regard to what’s going on in this book, we’re in different orbits. We’re just in different orbits altogether. It’s all that. It’s all me and suffering. That’s the danger of it, I think, that it robs away from my work. Especially when you see Paul talk about, it’s not just suck it up and suffer like Joe did. It’s rejoice in suffering because of what’s true of you, now and in the future. That’s the politics in the world. Well, one of the beauties of the New Testament is your sufferings become the sufferings of Christ, right? Because of your intimate union with him. Badges of belonging. Yeah, I mean, it’s just like, wow, that’s remarkable stuff. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, all the Puritan stuff just doesn’t cut it with regard to Job, in my opinion. Because I’ve been schooled. You know, from Meredith Klein, Gerhardus Voss, and others, the biblical theological scope of the whole Bible is ultimately Christological, is the only way to really get to its meaning, questions of meaning, and what the text actually is, means at the end of the day. And that’s why I said, take 42.7, go to any book. What do they say about 42.7? On the basis of what they say on 42.7, you’ll know everything. You know what I mean? That’s the giveaway. You’ll know everything else they’re going to say that precedes it. If they’re fumbling all over the place on 42.7, then everywhere else that’s significant, they’re going to be fumbling all over. And they’re not going to understand what the debate is about. And, you know, often the debate is, well, these guys are really like Pharisees and really self-righteous and really bearing down on Job. And all Job wants is mercy for all he’s going through. And you read the text, it’s the exact opposite. I mean, exact opposite. They’re offering him mercy. Job says, I don’t want mercy. I want vindication for my righteousness. So what most people want to say about the book is the exact opposite, if you actually carefully spend time working through the text and what’s going on there. And that’s why, for years, I mean, for years, I could never understand what’s going on in the debate because I had that paradigm in mind. And once I realized, well, there’s something faulty with the paradigm, then everything fell into place. There are just good covenant theologians that apply the covenant. And Job just says, yeah, I agree with you. However, I don’t need mercy. However, I am righteous. Yeah. Our mutual friend Dan Panicle talks about some of the history of interpretation being informed by a theocentric approach rather than a Christocentric approach towards scripture. And I think that has some merit. Yeah, yeah, because you can have a high view of God, you know, which the Puritans did consistently, but it falls in its lack of Christocentric understanding. Yeah. Okay. Well, yes, back there in the back. Yes, sir. We know that this Job is a type of Jesus and not Jesus, because in the New Testament, When the new heavens and the new earth, everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or fathers or mothers or children or land, for my name’s sake, will receive not double, but a hundredfold, and will inherit it in their lives. Very good. Yes. A type, not Jesus himself. Yes? 42-7. Yeah, 42-7. It tends to be the tell-all. Because the answer to 42-7 is simply, well, what was the debate about? And what the debate about was not who’s the better theologian. That wasn’t what the debate was about. They’re all on the same theological page. The debate was about how can you, knowing who God is, knowing what the covenant is, knowing what man is, born of a woman, how can you stand there and insist that you’re righteous? And you don’t deserve what’s coming to you, yeah. And that’s the tell-all. I mean, it’s that simple. You see, that’s what the debate is about, then you can answer 42-7. They insisted that God cannot curse a righteous man. Job said, well, yes, he can. He’s cursing me. For a greater purpose. Yes, for a greater purpose. To defeat the devil, number one. Remember, that’s the debate. And there’s Genesis 3.15, right? Genesis 3.15 is the proto-evangelium, right? The beginning proclamation of the gospel. Well, what is that? Adam failed to be righteous. There’s someone coming along that’s going to defeat the devil. But in that defeat, not only will he crush the devil’s head, but his foot will be crushed. So there’s going to be an exchange of wounding going on there. And where do we find that fulfilled? We find that fulfilled in Jesus Christ as he is crucified on the skull, cranium, the hill, kalgotha means in the Greek cranium, and there he is hanging with his foot over top, his bleeding foot over top of that mountain which he’s crucified, cranium. His foot is wounded, but he’s in a kingly, royal position of defeat of the devil. So Job is in between that 315 of Genesis and the gospel account of Jesus’ victory over the devil. He’s in between the two, anticipating it. That’s why I say the redemptive historical ball is rolling to get to its finality in Christ. And it’s kind of stopped off in the book of Job and said, OK, here’s a little bit more about what this ball entails, about this foot crushing the enemy. And that’s what Job does. He defeats the devil in his own right. He passes the test, but he passes it with himself. experiencing his own mortality, being placed under extreme curse and suffering. Yes? If you want to look this up, I’m with Elmer Smick. Elmer Schmick was Old Testament professor at Covenant Seminary, and he wrote in the Expositors Bible Commentary Series. It’s a 12-volume set. It was completed probably around 1990, maybe in the 80s even. But anyway, he has the book Job, and in that He has some tremendous stuff in there. For example, Smick is the one who enabled me to understand the 14 Oaths of Self-Malediction in Chapter 31, clearly. And he was great on it. Smick also led me to understand the Leviathan. He calls it mythopoetic. of Satan. He’s really good on that. But the other thing that Schmick helped me to understand, what was the question again? Yeah, the other thing that he persuaded me of, and I would encourage you to read Schmick and see if it’s persuasive to you, but he collapses Behemoth and Leviathan into one. And he shows in Psalm 74 and other appearances of Leviathan, the seven-headed Leviathan, how it’s also referenced as another creature. So I think he gives good intertextual canonical evidence that behemoth and Leviathan, though there are two different designations, are referencing one and the same reality. So that’s SMIC. I felt that hung together of all that I’ve read. I thought that really put it together the best. But I would say read them, see what you think. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. Monster. Monster. Dragon. Serpent. There’s a book by a guy named Naselli out of Trinity that wrote a book on serpents in scripture. It’s a little paperback. It’s excellent. And again, he supports my view on identifying Leviathan as a guise for Satan. Naselli is his last name out of Trinity. fun read. It’s not like heavy, heavy, heavy. But he very tightly argued. And he goes through all those different categories of monster, serpent, dragon, et cetera. Yeah. Yes, sir? Mike? Yeah, I’m still struggling with the children’s question. You said early on that Jehovah’s Witnesses in literature And that helps me to get perspective on it, because we have, you know, other books in that genre like Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon that are not necessarily historical, right? I mean, the Shunammite woman or, you know, that love affair in Song of Solomon, that’s not necessarily narrative or history or, you know. But on the other hand, if Job is, Yeah. Yeah, those are some vital interpretive questions and I just lightly land on, yeah, it’s historical but it’s not a tape recording. So, it’s a product of the Holy Spirit. And at least that way, I don’t have to come up with any crazy interpretations, but still get the rich theological point of the book, right? This is the righteous man enduring the curse to defeat the devil, to mediate at the altar, to open the doors of glory for him and his people. So. It’s not myth. It’s not parable. It’s not fable. But it’s typology, which history is. Joseph, for example, is historical typology. Okay, well, good questions. Thanks for being nice about them. Hope you’re edified and benefited by these two messages in the Book of Job. Oh, there’s always more. What’s that? I said there’s always more. Yeah.