Study 5 – Job – “The restoration of Job” by. Neville Clark

Study 5 – Job – “The restoration of Job” by. Neville Clark

Job Ch 40

Just before we begin, I would draw your attention to this handout at the back of your stapled sets. What I have endeavoured to do here is to write the argument of Job all on one page, and in order to do that, I have got the four groups of characters of the book across the top row. So we’ve got Job, his friends, Elihu and then God, these are the four main speakers, if you like in the book,  and as far as the content of their words is concerned, I would split each set into issues relating to Job’s suffering, Job’s alleged sin, God’s character and the solution to the problem.

As you will appreciate, Job’s view of his suffering and his sin is very different to what the friends say and what Elihu says, and even what God says. And the solution to the problem is very different between them all so if you were simply to read across each of these sections, for example, if you talk talk about Job’s suffering, just read across each of these sections and by the time you get to God’s position on Job’s suffering, you’ve resolved the entire issue of the suffering of Job.

And similarly with Job’s sin, such as it might have been or might not have been, God’s character has got the solution to these things, so hopefully read through that and try to, at a glance if you like, make sense of the entire argument of the book of Job. Take time to read it, because it took me a long time to make it.

Ok, where are we? Here we are here. We are down to this last section. Remember the explanation of Elihu and his four speeches and so we’ve got before us this afternoon essentially two interactions between Yahweh and Job. Chs 38 and 39 and then Chs 40 and 41 where God speaks to Job twice. You will remember that these are the companion sections, if you like, to when God spoke to Satan twice right at the very start, so as we said before there is a symmetry about the book of Job.

Well, as you can see for 35 chapters now, from about Ch 3, this controversy has raged about the real purpose of Job’s suffering. Did he sin or didn’t he? and how the argument has gone.

And you remember in our last talk, yesterday evening, Job had a major complaint against God. He wanted to take God to court because he felt he had been mis-treated, that God wasn’t doing a good job of running the place, that wickedness went untended and that the righteous suffered and they really ought not to do so.  Well Job basically is saying that God acts in an arbitrary and destructive manner, and there’s chaos out there, who can tell what is happening? ‘God is unjust and he lets the wicked prosper. He can’t be understood you can’t really find out what happens around you.  He is unjust, I am a righteous man and I am not being treated as such,’ and that makes God unrighteous in Job’s eyes. Finally, not only is he personally righteous but the only way to resolve this in Job’ mind is for God to declares it so, essentially that God vindicate Job publicly because he has been humiliated publicly.

That’s where we left it yesterday and if we had done the Elihu study as a study and we had slides, I could show you this, but I will show it to you now. Elihu comes in and says, ‘Aha, not so fast. By all means take your complaint to God if you wish, but I would suggest that would be unwise. Why don’t you bounce it off me first and then see if you still want to go to God?’ So back comes Elihu. What does Elihu think about the fact that God acts in an arbitrary and destructive manner? ‘Not true. God sustains life,’ says Elihu, ‘he manages the earth, he uses the elements to judge, give life and to shew mercy.’ Now I didn’t cover all of this with you this morning but here’s the verses, this is what Elihu says. ‘There is nothing arbitrary about creation,’ that’s his point. Secondly, ‘God is unjust and lets the wicked prosper,’ ‘No, not true’ says Elihu ‘God is just, and there are unexplained judgements, people just disappear, that is God taking care of wickedness. Wickedness will continue until Christ is in the earth, wickedness will continue. But, God has a brake on it, and it will only continue so far,’ that is Elihu’s point. ‘Well, God is silent,’ says Job, and he can’t be understood.’ ‘Well, in fact, God is not silent at all, he communicates by dreams to man, through suffering, through chastisement and by mediators. God does communicate with man, he’s far from silent, you are just not listening Job.’ That’s Elihu’s point. ‘God is in fact the perfect teacher but he doesn’t listen to the prayers of the inconsistent, he doesn’t answer the proud, that could be the problem with your lack of communication.’ A very astute answer by Elihu. ‘Well,’ Job says, ‘God has mis-treated me.’ Elihu says, ‘You are suffering because of sin, not the sins that the friends have made up about you, not the closet life-style of hypocrisy that the friends have theorised about, you are suffering because of what you have said in this debate, and if you had learned quicker, your suffering would have concluded, but look to where you have taken the debate, and so it would be unfair for God to remove your suffering and leave you in this elevated self-righteous position.’ Job says, ‘I want my day in court. I need God to tell me that I am, in fact, righteous.’ Elihu says, ‘Listen, you are not righteous, you have sinned in this debate, by being self-righteous and by being rebellious, by not learning quick enough.’ And then Elihu provides the audience Job desires so Job wants vindication and Elihu says, ‘I will give you vindication I’m here to defend you, I’m here to vindicate you, answer me if you can. Tell me if I have misrepresented you, tell me if I have got it wrong?’

Silence from Job. So this is big thing, Elihu begins to answer Job’s desire for vindication before everybody. Immediately he says, ‘Well declare God’s righteousness to man,’ and that is exactly what Elihu began  to do for Job. ‘Well make atonement for it.’ Well he can’t do that, to give him hope of life, so Elihu explains the atonement to Job, he explains how Job can be fully reconciled to God through all of this. The three friends had a very immature and infantile approach to the Truth, it was all about ‘exact retribution,’ if you do this, God does this, do this and God does that, and it wasn’t very much more complex than that. Elihu has added an entire new dimension to the picture and he has marvellously helped Job prepare for the interview with God. As I say, if Elihu hadn’t said this, and if Job had gone into the interview without these answers, where do you think he would be in his approach to God?

This is the structure of Chs 38 to 42. Come back to Ch 38 because we are going to start here.  There has been a great storm as you know, and the rain has started to come down, and now standing in the darkness in the pouring rain, the sun’s completely obscured, the only light is from the Shekinah glory above them and the voice is booming over the storm and the thunder and lightning is just crashing all around them, and there they are in this remarkably cocooned scene, these three friends, plus Elihu, plus Job and God overshadowing them. Now we’ve got to explain everything else that Elihu hasn’t yet explained. “Gird up thy loins,” V 3 of Ch 38, “like a man. I will demand of thee, answer thou me.” ‘All right, Job, you wanted the interview, you wanted your day in court, now it is come, I hope you are prepared for it.’ And you can see here, between Chs 38 and 41, God is going to speak twice. Here is His first speech, Chs 38 and 39 and here’s the second speech, Chs 40 and 41.   Ch 42 is like the epilogue of the book. In the first speech you can see at a glance how this breaks up, pretty much. Well, there’s a bit of a problem, If you look at Ch 38, the chapter break comes after Ch 38:41, but the chapter break really ought to be after Ch 38:38 because the first 38 verses of Ch 38 describe the inanimate creation; the earth, the sea, the sun, the light, the dark, the wind, the stars, the clouds, all the physical creation about us. In v 39 of Ch 38 almost to the end of Ch 39, you’ve got the animate creation, or the animals described. So unfortunately, the chapter breaks – well how did they get that wrong? It is pretty clear when you look at it, but the chapter break is in a very bad spot. The chapter break really ought to be after Chs 38:38 and that would put all of the animals into Ch 39.

Then there is a small confession by Job in the first five verses of Ch 40, and then we have God speaking again, and we’ve got more animals described in Ch 41, the behemoth which I believe is the hippopotamus and the leviathan, which is the crocodile. And then, of course, we have another confession by Job. So you can see, God’s open challenge, the first speech, Job’s confession. God’s opening challenge, the second speech, Job’s confession, and then the completion of the book, you see? So that’s how this last section breaks up. No mystery there, really, pretty simple, but extremely powerful.

I suppose the obvious question that arises from this is, you can see what Job’s allegations against God are, how is this going to answer that? If you have ever read these last chapters of Job before and thought ‘What does it all mean? What is this supposed to mean?’ So Job’s self-righteous, you can glean that without too much work, because Elihu just says ‘You are self-righteous.’ So in order to deal with Job’s self righteousness, God gives him a burst on the physical creation, a burst on the animal creation and a second burst on the animal creation, as a result of which, Job repents in dust and ashes and says, ‘You’re right, I’m wrong,’ the whole book concludes.

How does this answer a man who is self-righteous? Obviously, there is a riddle here. There is something that has to be unlocked here. When I first read this, I thought the answer was that Job accuses God of being a poor ruler of the world, that God doesn’t know what he is doing, that he is indiscriminate about how he treated people, that he can’t be understood by his creation. Then God simply comes in and says ‘Well,’ Job, ‘where were you when I created the earth? Do you know how the clouds work, do you know how the tides of the sea are bounded by the sea shore, do you know these things? Do you feed the creation? Do you know how the animals operate?’ as if to say, ‘Job, if you don’t understand these things, you’ve got no right to tell me I’m not a wise creator,’ as if God has simply bombarded Job with questions Job couldn’t possibly understand and pushed him into a corner and side-stepped the issue about righteousness. I mean, it is almost how it reads.

But it can’t be that, because that wouldn’t convince Job, any more than it would convince you or me. What this must mean, as I say, therefore, is that there is a code in here. There is a riddle here, and that this, in fact, is the story of righteousness somehow, because that’s Job’s big issue. And this is the answer to that issue, so what we are going to do now is a little detective work and unravel what the story is of this explanation by God to Job’s allegation that he is more righteous than God. You see the problem? There must be a solution here to that question somehow.

So what does God actually say? Here is the first speech, the inanimate creation, the physical creation. Well, here it is. So you can see that what we are talking about,  here is the earth, the sea, the sun, light and dark, the weather, the stars, the clouds. This is the first major speech and the lion’s share of Ch 38 of Job. Now look what God says here. V 4, “Where wast thou Job, when I laid the foundations of the earth, declare if thou hast understanding, who laid the measures thereof if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it?” So God picks up now where Elihu left off, dealing with the creation. You know, Elihu never really finishes speaking does he? He just, in fact, gets drowned out by the noise of the storm and then the voice of God comes in over the top. Elihu is speaking right up to the end of Ch 37 and God comes straight over the top. From Job’s point of view, this is almost one continuous conversation.

He can’t answer Elihu, Elihu has prepared him to hear the voice of God, he can’t answer Elihu, and then God comes straight in and Job’s feeling pretty small as this great light shines above him and the voice of God comes down upon them. What did Job know about the formal function of the earth? that’s what God asks in these verses. Clearly the earth was made to a plan, clearly it is operating to a plan, it is maintaining a balance that supports life, what did Job know about that? ‘Even the angels rejoiced when creation was completed’ he says, but Job thought he knew enough to criticise how God ran the world. Not that God is trying to overwhelm Job with the complexity of these questions, but these are the answers to Job’s questions.

‘All right, Job, what about the sea? What do you know about the sea, Job,’ V 8, “Who has shut up the sea with doors, when it breaks forth as if it issues from the womb? V 10  And break up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?” What’s the point? The point is, that the natural elements have boundaries, Jer 5:22 says, “I placed the sand for a bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it: and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet an they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it.” So God has put the sand for a boundary on the sea, it is designed that way, the sea can never breach the beach, that’s his point. The sea can never overrun the land again. Bear in mind, it has done it before, the sea has overrun the land before and God says in Jeremiah, ‘I will put a boundary to the sea, the sea will stay in its place. It is not uncontrolled out there in creation. I have created it specifically like this.’

‘All right,’ says Job, ‘that’s fine, but the wicked prosper? I look around, nothing ever happens to them nothing goes wrong for the wicked, they go to bed happy.’ ‘Oh’ says God, ‘think about this Job.  Who do you think it was that told the sun to rise?’ We might say, how does this answer the question? Look at v 12, “Hast thou commanded the morning, since thy days, and caused the dayspring to know his place?” The dayspring is the sun. ‘Have you commanded the sun to know when to go up and when to go down? No you haven’t.’ Well so what? V 13, “That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?” So what is it saying? Well you can imagine the earth like a blanket with the crinkles in it, that’s the hills, and the sun comes up over the side of this blanket, and it plays its light on the blanket, and that shakes all the wicked out of the blanket, because what happens? Well, men love darkness because their deeds are evil, and as soon as the sun comes up all the criminals run for cover. God says, ‘I’ve done that, the sun rises every day to control wickedness in the earth. You think the wicked go unchecked, you think it is chaos out there, not at all, I’ve made it like this,’ and Job is thinking, ‘I’ve never thought about it like that,’ but it is true, and it is true, what do we have street lights for? Not just so you can drive your car. Light dispels darkness, light dispels wickedness, and God says, I am making the sun rise to control wickedness. Job, you’ve just got no idea about the wisdom I have put in place. ‘Well,” says Job, “sure, but who knows this, who do you tell this to? I mean you are incomprehensible, who can understand what you do,’ you see, none of this points to God. In Ch 28 he says, “If I go to the depth of the earth or the depths of the sea, I can’t find wisdom.” V 16, God says, ‘Well, Job, hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? Or hast thou walked in search of the depth? Have the gates of death been opened unto thee or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death? I go to those places Job, I go to the greatest depths of everywhere, I know what is happening, everywhere, Job. Now you aren’t able to understand that anymore, because you cant’t go to those depths yourself, which, of course you can’t do.’ The implication is that God is in complete control, he know what he is doing, and he does have man’s best interests at heart. It is interesting, you know, Rev 20:13 says this, “And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and the books were opened,” you see, God’s wisdom extends to the depth and the breadth and he uses it to save man. ‘And I might add Job,’ says God, ‘ nature is not as much out of control as you think, I’ve got complete control over the elements and they are used for judgment,’ V 22, “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Hast thou seen the treasures of the hail which I have preserved agains the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?” ‘There is a day when wickedness will be eradicated and it will be my creation that does it.’

Now you know in Ezek 38 hailstones, fire, earthquake, is what destroys the Gogian invader. It is the issues of nature which are played out on the northern army that God uses. He says, ‘I’ve got complete control over creation, and I might tell you, there is latent power within the creation which no man has ever seen, which one day I am going to turn the key and unlock it and men will be destroyed the world over,’ says God. ‘Don’t pretend that creation is out of control. If it was out of control, you wouldn’t be standing here right now, because look at the power that creation has got, the natural creation’s got, Job, you just don’t know what you are saying.’ V 26, ‘And he says, I cause it to rain on the earth where no man is, in the wilderness wherein there is no man. Creation is not just reserved for judgment, Job, it also saves itself, it preserves life in itself. You are not out there in the wilderness, Job, no-one’s out there in the wilderness, feeding these animals, raining on them, but I am out there. I’m doing it, Job. Job can’t believe what he is hearing but God is not overwhelming Job with hard questions that he can’t answer, he is telling him how he thinks. He is telling him how he thinks about his creation, and how he is going to use his creation.

V 31.  Job has already said, back in chapter 9:9 that God made Arcturus, Orion and Pleiades , God made the stars, well look at V 31, he says to Job, “Job, can’st thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion?” Now, ‘the sweet influences,’ I don’t know where this translation came from, ‘the sweet influences’ this should be ‘cluster.’ “Job can’st thou bind the cluster of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion,” now what does it mean? Well, the Pleiades in Greek mythology were seven Greek sisters and there are seven stars in the constellation of Pleiades. They are not related to each other these stars, they just happen to be in the same spot in the sky, but they are billions of miles apart, and as the year goes by, they move closer and further away but they stay in a cluster, but they don’t remain exactly the same distance away from each other, and God says, ‘Can you bind them?’ Of course not, and the Orion, the twin start, these stars orbit each other like this, and by a particular relationship of their gravitational forces, they stay always the same distance apart. ‘Can you loose them? Can you bind Pleiades and can you loose Orion, Job? Can you do that?’ Of course, there is no chance that Job can possibly do this. What ‘s the point, the point is that God made the stars and he controls them, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, everything does as it is told, everything operates as it is designed. If God can control the big influences, he can obviously control the smaller influences as well.  And in conclusion here of this section, here it is, the design of the earth, V 36. “Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts,” The RSV says “the clouds.” ‘Who has put wisdom in the clouds, or who has given understanding to the heart?’ The RSV says ‘the mist.’ “Who has put wisdom in the clouds? Who has given understanding to the mist?” He says. There is a designer here, that’s the point, creation is not haphazard, it doesn’t happen by mistake, God controls everything.

I made a comment a moment ago that God is not just bewildering Job with complex arguments that Job can’t hope to match God upon, he is telling Job what he thinks. Now what do we mean by that, V 8, “The sea was born,” it issued out of the womb, “The sea was born.” The earth in V 9 “was wrapped in swaddling bands,” in V11, “the earth was instructed in the way of life.” The sun in V 12, “Was given a work to do.”  “Light was born,” in V 21, “Rain has a father,” in v 28, “Ice comes from the womb,” V 29, and when it all began, V 7 “the angels rejoiced, the morning stars sang together.” Do you know what? God treats this earth as his off-spring. You know, when God brought his own son into the world, his mother wrapped him in swaddling clothes, he was instructed in the way of life. God taught him wisdom, and gave him a job and he was there for the blessing of man and the angels rejoiced at his creation. That is exactly what he does with his children. So if God says, this whole earth is a physical type of my son which is to come and I wrap this thing here in swaddling clothes, that is exactly what it says in V 9, ‘I wrap the earth in swaddling clothes, just like I wrap my son. I’ve taught the earth wisdom, just like I’ve taught my son, and these are for the benefit of man, just like my son. That’s how I think about creation, Job.’ You’d never think that God would talk like that, and that’s the section in Ch 38.

Now what about the animals. Well, here is the animate creation, and here they are and what we know is immediately all the animals occur in pairs. So he talks about the lion and the raven and the wild Goat, the deer, the wild ass, the unicorn, which is a now extinct wild ox, the peacock – the peacock is actually the stork, the ostrich, the horse, the hawk, the eagle. These are all the animals of Job Ch 38 and all of Job Ch 39, and each of these animals occur in pairs. And the ostrich, in fact, occurs twice. The ostrich is compared to the stork in terms of motherhood, or length thereof, and the ox which is compared to the horse, in terms of fearlessness and speed. So the ostrich occurs twice, and as soon as you see that, everything occurs in pairs. The lion, the raven , the goat, the hind, or the deer, the wild ass, the wild ox, the ostrich and the horse, and the ostrich and the stork and the hawk and the eagle.  Whilst it is true that you could simply read this as a great list of how God cares for his creation, there is a lot more to it than that, there must be, because as Job completes this first interview with God, He responds, He  responds, and then God, having done this comes back with another pair of animals in Ch 40, the leviathan and the behemoth.

So there is no coincidence that these are all in pairs, because in Ch 40, there is going to be another pair of animals that get given to Job to consider. You think, ‘All right, what is the point here, what is the point of all these animals?’Well, you’ve got a clue. Here is the clue in Ch 40:15, you’ve got a clue about what God means when he talks about these animals. I told you, it is written in code. We’ve just got to break the code. Here it is here. V 15 of Ch 40, the behemoth, the hippopotamus, “Behold now, behemoth, which I made with thee.” What does that mean? Well, you could say, perhaps the hippopotamus was made on day six and that happens to be also when man was made on day six. But so what? What’s the point of telling us that? There must be an inference here, brothers and sisters and young people, that in some way the behemoth represents man. That he is like a man in some way. Well, that is a good theory, what else can you offer me? Well, I will offer you this, come across the page to Ch 41:34, the last verse of Ch 41. Now here is leviathan, the crocodile. “He beholdeth all high things he is king over all the children of pride. Now there is no doubt about that, crocodiles don’t have pride, animals don’t have pride, he represents man, the crocodile represents man. The hippopotamus represents man, all these animals represent men. Ah, we’ve broken the code you see. We’ve broken the code, ok? Come back to Ch 38. End of Ch 38, look at them, here’s the first couplet. Ch 38:39, “Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion or fill the appetite of the young lions when they crouch in their dens and abide in the covert to lie in wait? Who provideth for the raven his food when his young ones cry unto God, when they wander for lack of meat.” And immediately here there are implications for Job, because the lioness kills to feed her young, and leaves the rest for the ravens. So the noblest of beasts and the meanest of birds, yet one helps the other, and in the context of nature, none of us blink at that, we say, that’s fine, that’s how nature works. But it raises the question, of suffering injustice, doesn’t it, because in killing for its young and feeding the raven, the prey suffers as an innocent victim, doesn’t it? There is an animal here which suffers, in order to nourish the lion and the raven. Well, what’s the prey? V 1, Ch 39, “Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth, or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve,” these are the prey, these are the animals the lions kill. V 4, “Their  young ones are in good liking, they grow up with corn, they go forth and return not to them. Ah, that’s interesting, because these are animals for prey, but God cares for them, and in v 4, what’s the point? The point is they breed quickly, their young ones can pretty much run from the day they are born, they grow up very fast, they leave home very early, they don’t come back. They are completely independent. It would be a problem, wouldn’t it, if the goats had a number of young and the young took 20 years to nurture to adulthood like they do for humans, you’d kill the goat population immediately, they would become extinct overnight. But that is not how they have been created though, goats breed very fast, their young are almost independent from the day they are born, and within a very short while, they go and never come back. They do their own thing. So, God has created the goats to be independent that they might be food for the lion. The lion goes about its business, feeds its young, eats what it wants, leaves the rest and the ravens are fed because the lion doesn’ eat the whole carcass. Think of that? So the lion kills the deer, the raven feeds off the kill as an unintended beneficiary.

Satan afflicted Job. Three friends are going to learn enormous lessons as unintended beneficiaries. They know about as much about Satan as the raven does of the lion. The raven doesn’t know where the carcass comes from, he just comes along and picks the meat off the bones, but did God provide for Job? Does God provide for the deer and the goats? Absolutely, absolutely. And those wild goats, you know, these wild goats here, these are very different sorts of people to what Job was. Job’s got nurses, he’s got servants, he’s got people to run after him, these wild goats, they are poor, they are poor people, they’ve got to fend for themselves, they live life tough, they survive. They’ve got big families, no chance of ever making them extinct, they are happy, their kids just run off very, very early in life and go and start their own families and do their own thing. Oh yes, the lions take some of them but they breed so fast it doesn’t matter.

Job 39:5, the wild ass, what about him? ‘Who has sent out the wild ass free, who has loosed the bands of the wild ass.’ Here’s a person who can’t be tamed, he’s the person who can’t be instructed,  he’s wilful you see, he won’t listen. He’s a brother actually, in ecclesial life, that’s what he is. Or he might be a sister, but let’s say he is a brother. Gen 16:12, Ishmael was a man like this. A wild ass of a man Genesis says. God says so, that is what Ishmael would be like, wild, unruly, fiercely independent, you can’t work with him, it’s got to be done his way or it won’t be done any way at all. That’ s why he lives in isolation, he can’t relate to people. He can’t really handle a big ecclesia, he just wants a little meeting way out in the wops somewhere. Look at V 7, “He scorns the multitude of the city.” He doesn’t go to Bible Schools, because he doesn’t like crowds. He might not be unfaithful, he just can’t handle a big gathering. They exist, don’t they. They exist. He lives a simple life, he lives a humble life, people and society mean nothing to him. If you upset him you will find it out very quickly. He’s got a problem with crowds, he’d just rather be out there by himself.

V 10, The unicorn, or as he is, the wild ox. “Canst thou bind the wild ox with his band in the furrow or will he harrow the valleys after thee.” Here’s somebody with all the potential in the world. This creature is immensely strong, you get one of those and you can get rid of all your tractors, he can pull anything. All the potential in the world, but not the will. Immensely powerful but he’ll never ever work for you. Not because he is wilful, not like the wild ass, but because he is just uncooperative. He is just contrary, he doesn’t like doing it, therefore V 11, Who will trust him, you can never rely on him. He will never ever deliver what he says. If you could harness him, brothers and sisters, he would do the work of ten men, but who can tell him. If you try and force him, he’ll mow you down.  They exist. Well I don’t say this is a good characteristic but it is real life.

And the ostrich contrasted with the peacock here, or as it is the peacock ought to be the stork. The ostrich and the stork, V 13, “Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the stork, or wings and feathers to the ostrich?” Looking at the stork, she is the classic figure of maternity, she’s given her life to motherhood and apple pie, I mean it is the sort of sister she is, isn’t she? You skin your knee, she’s the person you wan’t to go and see. But look at her in comparison to the ostrich, flappy, showy, a complete scatter brain, ‘God’s deprived her of wisdom’ he says in V 17, she actually has no brains, that’s what she’s like. She’s just not the sharpest knife in the rack, she lives her whole life with her head in the sand. She might be in the ecclesia, she might contribute well, only to undo everything she has done with some foolish action, some foolish word, and she’s got kids, Oh, don’t ask about the kids. V 16. She’s hardened against her young ones, as though they were not hers. The kids have almost got to bring themselves up. Oh, that the stork adopted them but that is just not how it is, and life is like that, you see, people are like that. Not good, she needs to change, but some people are born starting from this position.

And the horse, V 19, “Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou closed his neck with thunder?” Here’s a man who is born for the battle, or a woman for that matter, these are like the trade-unionists of life, born for the battle, you can’t scare them, you threaten them, it only raises the stakes. V22, “He mocketh at fear and is not afrighted. Neither turns he back from the sword.” Here’s somebody who looks for conflict, and if there is no conflict it is about time to create some. Loves it. You’ve got to be careful, you see, if there is a scrap on, particularly if there is an ecclesial issue on he could be a very trusty ally, but he could spend his life fighting. The problem is, if the battle ever finishes he is likely to bolt right out of the Truth. That happens too. These are the members of your ecclesia in Job 39, they are the members of my ecclesia, this is what we are like, brothers and sisters.

And the section closes with the hawk and the eagle, Vs 26 onwards, “Doth the hawk fly by wisdom and stretch her wings towards the south? Doth the eagle mount up at thy command and make her nest on high,” he says. This is the wisdom of migration and the wisdom of habitation. One bird for some reason just knows where it has got to go in life, and the other bird knows how to protect itself and knows where to put the best investment. It knows to build its house high up on a cliff where no-one can get into it, it just instinctively is smart about some of those life-decisions. But once again, they are creatures of prey, and it is a funny thing that often amongst us, and often in life the people who are the sharpest, the people who make the smartest decisions, the people who can see issues for what they are, often don’t have a lot of feelings for other people. These animals they are smart, they are extremely smart, but they are creatures of prey. Their young ones  V30  Drink blood. It is a funny thing isn’t it?

What is God showing Job? These are my pairs, my pairs of animals and here is the last pair. Here are the lessons and here are the allegations that Job made. So here we are. ‘Job, you say that God is a poor ruler of the world but God’s power in creation is constructive, it is controlled, and it is used for the benefit of all creation,’ that’s God’s answer. ‘Job, you say that God is unjust and let’s the wicked prosper. Well God in fact restrains sin, the wicked don’t have carte blanche control over the whole world, that’s just not true. The sun rises and stops there and God’s long-suffering.  He doesn’t rejoice in the destruction of the wicked,’ Oh that he would convert the wicked, otherwise where would we be, brothers and sisters? But he will one day destroy them. God is sorry he can’t be understood, well, that’s because man can’t plumb the dimensions of the physical world. If man can’t plumb the dimensions of the physical world, how can he possibly question God’s activities in the moral world? Man just doesn’t know enough, he just doesn’t make enough observations of God in the physical creation about him.

‘Well,’ Job says, ‘you are treating me cruelly ad unjustly, it is not fair what you are doing to me.’ ‘Ah, Job, animals represent them, I care for everything, Job, including those that you would find undesirable. Some people need careful handling in order to be saved. In order to achieve this, sometimes the earth must suffer for the guilty, it happens in the animal world. It happens in the human world. God’s purpose is a lot bigger than just you and me you see.’ God’s treatment of Job is for the salvation of others. It is not a personal animosity towards Job. Look what God is telling Job as he unfolds his explanation of creation. Job could never have dreamed of an answer like this, you see.

Well Ch 40, now, brings us to the conclusion of the first discussion between Yahweh and Job. V 1, Yahweh answers Job and says,”Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct him? He that reproveth God let him answer it.” Job answers Yahweh and says, “I am vile, what shall I answer thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further.” I’ve got nothing to add. Back in Ch 34:37, Elihu told Job that he had multiplied words against God. Job says here in v 5, ‘I don’t want to say another word, I’ve said way too much already.’ But God speaks again. Even if Job’s finished, God has not. God has only just begun, there is another speech coming. He hasn’t finished, and the reason another speech is coming is because of this. God hasn’t yet answered all Job’s issues. He hasn’t yet answered all the allegations that Job has made. He hasn’t really dealt with, in fact, this whole issue of righteousness and Job’s desire for personal vindication. That hasn’t actually been touched yet, so even if Job’s finished speaking and doesn’t want to say any more, God’s got still more to say, you see.

V6, “Then answered Yahweh unit Job out of the whirlwind, and said, Gird up thy loins now like a man.” Now that is just what he said in Ch 38, ‘Job, don’t sit down yet, we haven’t finished. “Gird up your loins like a man, I will demand of thee and declare thou unto me.” ‘I am going to ask you questions now, and you better have answers, Job.’ Well, it is going to get quite serious. “Wilt thou also disannul my judgment, wilt thou condemn me, that thou Mayes be righteous?” Well, there’s the issue. ‘We still haven’t dealt with this issue, Job, you think you are more righteous than me?’ That’s what we are going to deal with ahead, see? The next speech is going to deal with it. ‘We haven’t got to the bottom of my righteousness versus yours, Job. The discussion between us has still got to continue.’

Well, V 10, This is what God says to him. “Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency; and array thyself with glory and beauty. Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud and abase him.” ‘Don’t just be angry, do something serious, Job. Remove the pride from proud people, look at everyone that is proud and bring him low, and tread down the wicked in his place. Hide them in the dust together, bind their face in secret. If you can do that, then I will also confess to thee that thine own right hand can save.’ ‘If you can do that, then you can achieve personal righteousness which might mean that I owe you something. But if you can’t do this, if you can’t control these most basic and strongest human emotions, you are not going to win this contest.’ Well, he is scratching his head, brothers and sisters, and thinking, ‘What is God about here? What is this supposed to mean?’ And again, we’ve got a clue.

Look at v 10, You see, what we do is, we may not know the book of Job very well and we forget what has been said. God hasn’t forgotten a word, He hasn’t forgotten an emotion that has been said before. V 10 is an allusion to something. “Deck thyself now with majesty and excellence, array thyself with glory and beauty.” God is referring to something that Job has said. You come back with me to Ch 29, Job said something in Ch 29 and God has pulled it up here in Ch 40 and he is going to take him to task about it, very specifically. Job 29:14, and the allusion to it in Ch 40:10. Ch 29:14, Job says, now remember this is the first chapter of the second of Job’s monologues, where Job talks about what things were like before his suffering began. We looked at this last night. V 14, he says, “I put on righteousness and it clothed me, my judgment was as a robe and a diadem.” It is interesting because God has just said to him, “Deck thyself now with majesty and excellency, array thyself with glory and beauty,” now that’s what he is referring to, Job clothed himself in righteousness, but God says, ‘Fine, get dressed, show me your character at its best, stand before me and let me see it.’ Job 29 is saying what was Job’s past glory, look at how things were before all these calamities of God came upon him. Remember V 15? “I was eyes to the blind, I was feet to the lame, I was a father to the poor and the cause which I knew not, I searched out, I was a master of hospitality, and ecclesial welfare,” that’s what Job says, and it was true, V 17, “I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth.” ‘I hated oppression and I dealt with it, summarily, I dealt with oppression.’ V 18 “I said, I am going to die in my nest, I will multiply my days as the sand. My root was spread out by the waters, the dew lay upon my branch all night,” he says, “my glory was fresh in me, my bow was renewed in my hand.” ‘I was like a great tree, sending its roots hither and thither, long life, my family spread out before me, that was my hope for the future.’

V 24, “If I laughed on people,” ‘if I smiled at them they believed it not, “the light of my countenance they cast not down.”  ‘If I acknowledged people, they treasured it, that I had done this for them. I don’t say that in an arrogant sense, but that’s the reality of the position I held,’ he says. Look, V 25, “I” and look at this carefully, “I chose out their way, I sat chief, I dwelt as a king, in the army, as one that comforts the mourners,” he says. That’s interesting. “I was a chief and I was a king.” Now you come back to Ch 40, that is very interesting, ‘I was a chief and I was a king.’ Job Ch 40:19, here’s the behemoth, I was a chief and I was a king,’ says Job. In Ch 40:19, Of the behemoth, of the hippopotamus it says, “He is chief of the ways of God,” so the behemoth’s the chief. Job Ch 41: 34, “Behold, leviathan is king, over all the children of pride.” So behemoth is chief and leviathan is king, so Job sat as a chief and a king, dressed in his self-righteousness.

Now we already know that animals represent people. Do you see what God is doing to Job, brothers and sisters? ‘Job, which one are you? Which one are you? Well, let me tell you Job you are none of them, I’ve got another one for you, another animal for you. So what He is going to do here is he introduces two more animals, and you can read the characteristics of these animals yourselves. There’s been some debate about is this really the elephant and not the hippopotamus, I think the hippopotamus fits best, is this really the crocodile or is it some kind of dinosaur, because you’ve got a reference here to smoke coming out of its nostrils? I actually think it is the crocodile and the smoke is probably steam coming out of the nostrils of the crocodile. Not too much mystery there.The point is, and this is the big point, this animal is invincible, and this animal is infinitely hostile. Can’t be tamed, can’t be marshalled, you cannot do anything with a crocodile. You start to think about the characteristics of the crocodile and well, release one in this room here and think about your reaction to it. Ok, the behemoth, the hippopotamus is the epitome of strength, look at Ch 40:16, He is the epitome of strength, “Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly, I mean, what can’t this animal push over, brothers and sisters? “He moveth his tail like a cedar, the sinews of his stones, or his thighs as it is, are wrapped together.” An enormously powerful animal. Everything about him is powerful, you see, and he is immovable, nothing can intimidate him, and he lives in the river, and when the river floods, well, what does he do? When the river floods he leans into it, he opens his mouth and he drinks it down. And what if it floods as a tsunami? He opens his mouth wider and he drinks it down. And that is what he is like V 23, “Behold, he drinketh up the river and hasteth not, he trusted that he could draw up Jordan into his mouth.” Now the reference here to Jordan has let people to think of the elephant, because there are no hippopotami in Jordan, but it says here that he can draw up Jordan, but Rotherhams says that ‘he could draw up a Jordan.’ It is actually a reference to the Nile hippopotamus just like this is a reference to the Nile crocodile, and the Nile hippopotamus could drink up A Jordan, an equivalent of A Jordan in his mouth, that’s the point.

Well, how does this work? Well, I’ll come back to that and I will show you something in a minute. Leviathan, here is the crocodile, the epitome of untrustworthiness, of aggression, of fear. Look at Ch 41:8 “Lay thy hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.” What does this mean? Touch him once, learn a lesson, don’t touch him again. That’s what it means isn’t it? It is very clear, don’t fool around with this animal. Do not fool around with this animal. V 14, “Who can open the doors of his face,” now you know, if you get a crocodile and you close his mouth, you can put a rubber band around it and he can’t open it. If you open his mouth there is nothing you can do to stop it shutting. An infinitely powerful bite on this animal. So you can’t do it. V 15, “His scales are his pride, shut up together as with a close seal. Before the origin of guns, you could not get through the hide of a crocodile, you would have to turn him over to kill him, you couldn’t get him through the top. Job 41;33, “Upon earth there is not his like who is made without fear.” This is interesting, When Noah was told that he controlled creation when he got off of the Ark after the flood, he was told that all creation was subject to him. He could subdue everything, he could now eat the herb and he could also eat meat. All animals would run from him and for the most part, that is true. This fellow will not run from you, it is a fact, there are a lot of crocodiles and they are not scared of people, they will come and hunt you out. There is only maybe the crocodile and the polar bear perhaps that are similar, we don’t have much contact with those because they only live in one place, but crocodiles are in a number of countries. Most animals, even lions and tigers, unless they are pushed for food, or need water, or unless you get in the way of then and their young, or something like that, where they are upset, they might attack you, otherwise they will steer clear of human kind. Crocodiles? They will come down the street, there is no question, they are not at all scared of people. Upon earth, nothing is like them, the scripture says. He will come looking for you and once he has got a taste of you, he will come back for more. This is amazing this animal, quite amazing.There is a key verse here, Ch 40:12, here is the key verse, he puts these two animals together and relates them to Job. Job 40:12, “Look upon every one who is proud, behemoth, and bring him low and tread down the wicked, leviathan, in his place,” you see? These are the two animals that Job can’t control, pride and sin, are part of his character, are part of his character.

Now how does this work? now look at this. Here’s behemoth, he represents man, he’s got a great strength, but he is not an especially violent animal. If you upset him, the hippopotamus will attack you, there is no question of that, and they do, but he doesn’t run around trying to attack things, he just eats grass. He can endure great trial, but he wasn’t a threat to people. Job had enormous resources to endure trial. He thinks he is better than he is, though, He’s only got a little tail, very strong, but it is only a little tail, but it is like a propeller under water behind him to get rid of excrement and so forth, but he thinks that this tail is very big. Job he glories in things of small account, in Ch 29 we read them, he’s running the ecclesia, he’s taking care of everything, he’s benefactor of the ecclesial world in that part of the ecclesial world at least. But God says, ‘Well, that’s good, there is no problem with that, but listen, the bigger things of life pride and sin, you do not have them under control, any more than anybody else.’ He’s self-confident, he can move unmolested amongst predators, nothing can touch him, the hippopotamus, nothing could touch Job. He walked as a king he had an army of supporters, nothing could possibly touch Job. This hippopotamus lives in circumstances of pleasure and protection and comfort, it describes it there, exactly the same as Job, he remains confident in the midst of disaster, exactly the same as Job, and he is best overcome by stealth. The only way you can ever catch a hippopotamus is to trick him, don’t try and take him when he is watching, the same with Job.

And the friends come to Job and say “boom,” right in front of him he goes ‘ping, ping.’ God comes at him and says ‘I will tell you a story, there’s a riddle here, think hard about it, and Job is silenced completely. You see? Here’s Job with the enormous resources of the hippopotamus and God says, ‘That’s you, I look at my creation and I see you like that, Job.’ And hippos, they are not all bad, there are some good things, they were extremely powerful, and if marshalled in the right way, they could be extremely useful, but that wasn’t all there was to Job, you see. That wasn’t all there was to Job, because if the hippopotamus is dangerous, in his own way, this thing is Lethal, untameable, the crocodile, you can’t touch it. Can’t be bridled, cant be managed, can’t be overcome, there is nothing you can do, do not try and use this animal for anything. You try and keep this thing as a pet, I mean, with pets we have, we develop relationships with pets, you know people keep savage dogs, and those dogs might attack everyone else in town but they won’t attack the owner, this thing will attack the owner, there is no question, it will attack the owner. You think about the crocodile, they might be 25ft long, big salt-water crocodile, very big, 6 to 800 kg, like lethal things. And what do they do? Well you think about it, what do they do? Well, they just sit there with their eyes above the swamp, how long will they sit there? All day. Do they move? They don’t even blink, You go too close, straight out of the water at you,  And they will wait all day for you to come down to the river bank.

That’s what sin is like, it lies dormant, it does nothing, and when you are watching it, it does nothing, it knows when it is being watched. You can walk around the edge of the river and you can watch it and when it sees you looking at it, it will do nothing, as soon as you go like this, it takes you, you see? Don’t parley with sin. You can’t control it. You can’t tame it, you can’t befriend it, it is not a pet. What do you do about this animal? All you can do is starve it. All you can do is starve it. The minute you try and feed it what, happens? It grows and inch bigger. Any lust that we have, you feed it, you give it any quarter, it will grow.  Let me tell you the bigger they get, the more powerful they are.

‘Job, can you control this? There’s one been living inside you. You control that Job, if you can deal with that, you can put it down, then I will confess you can save yourself. Unless you can deal with that, forget it.’ And look at him, he says here, this is a key verse here, Ch 41:10, “None is so fierce who dares stir him up, who then is able to stand before me?” ‘If you can’t control the crocodile, Job, how can you possibly answer me,’ says God.  ‘Invincible to man, weapons are useless against him, he is a king on earth, absolutely he is the king on earth today as he has ever been, you see?’ And God is now presenting Job with the final of the couples of animals, one which directly represents him is the hippopotamus and one, which in fact, represents all of us. The hippopotamus is a chief  and the levitation here is the king over all the children of pride, and so the hippopotamus is pride, and this one here is the king of pride, he even rules pride. Sin is over everything, that’s the point, you see? And what God has done here is give Job his final answer. Remember I told you, I go back here, we had one question yet to answer, we have the answer in the last speech of God. Job is proud. Job has helped the ecclesial world, but you know, there’s a bit of satisfaction in that by Job, no that Job was bad, I mean understand, when we talk about Job like this, none of us are remotely like Job, but Job wasn’t perfect, and there was a certain degree of pride in what he had done. He was unable to control sin, he couldn’t subdue his tendencies and he couldn’t save himself,  he can’t, but God can, and that’s the point. And so salvation can only come by submission to the righteousness of God, and that’s what Job had to learn. He was not more righteous than his maker. He could not do the things that God could do, and he had this animal living inside of him which in a very small way, only in a small way he had been feeding. There was a problem there you see. There was a problem.

Ch 42:1, “Job answered Yahweh and said, Oh, I know that thou canst do everything and that no thought can be witholden from thee. Thou sayest,” and he is quoting God, “Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge,” this is what God has just said to him “Therefore  have I answered that I understood not, things too wonderful for me that I knew not,” ‘You are right,’ he says to God, ‘I have said things I should not have said.’ “Hear I beseech thee and I will speak,” God said.”I will demand of thee and declare thou to me.” Job says to that, “Well I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye seeth thee. Wherefore, I abhor myself, in dust and ashes,” he says.  Now what does all of this mean? Well, look, I will show you, pretty simply, Here was his first answer that he gave to God’s speech and here is the answer he gave to God’s second speech. The first speech, Job answered and said, ‘I am vile, what shall I answer. I lay my hand upon my mouth, once have I spoken and I won’t speak again, I’ve got nothing more to say. ‘ Now that is very similar to what he says in the second speech. In the second speech, he quotes God’s words back to God and then he adds something. He says, ‘God can do everything’ and then he quotes God’s words back to God, then he restates what he said in the first speech, he quotes God’s words back to God, and he adds something else. So these two pieces in red are the new information that Job has added in his second speech that he didn’t say the first time round.  And this is the key to it here. “I heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye seeth thee. As a result of that, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.” What does that mean, what does he mean when he says “I heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye seeth thee?” Well, cast your mind back, when he got to the climax of his argument in Job Ch 19, what did he say? “I know that my redeemer liveth.” What does he say? “And that he shall stand in the latter day upon the earth and though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”  I’ve seen him, you see? He’s had his day in court, and he has now seen, not only the Shekinah glory above him but the character of God revealed to him. He says, I have now seen God, and far from vindicating me which is what I wanted back in Ch 19, he has put me back in the place I really belong. And I am very sorry to have seen myself compared to that. I repent. I abhor myself. It is pretty strong language, I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.

Well, brothers and sisters, the story is over, Job’s now had his final answer from God, and a remarkable answer. V 7 of Job Ch 42, “It was so, that after Yahweh had spoken these words to Job, Yahweh says to Eliphaz the Temanite,” Oh yes, they are still listening, “my wrath was kindled against thee and against thy two friends. Ye have not spoken to me that thing which was right as my servant Job has.” Ok, a couple of points there. Firstly, clearly Job’s argument has completely left the argument of the three friends behind, they look like immature children compared with Job. Look what God says about Job, “You have not spoken  of me that thing which is right as my servant Job has.”  What did Job say that was right. Job said pages and pages of things that were not right, God winked at it, forget it. Why? You are suffering, it is out of character, forget it. All God has done here, you see, is Job had an almost perfect character, but there was one aspect in Job’s character that which needed cleaning up, and so God removes everything else, and puts the magnifying glass on this little point, and expands it like that so Job can see it very clearly, so that everybody can see it. And lest the friends said, ‘Ho, phew, we thought he was a bit of a hypocrite, we thought he was self-righteous,’ God says, ‘well between you and me Job, there is a gulf like this between you and me, but now we understand that, but now let’s put things back in perspective. Now you friends…. There is a gulf like this between you and Job, much less between you and me. You haven’t spoken that which is right like my servant Job. This is the infinite mercy of God, you know, a remarkable thing. God just winks at all the stuff that Job said, it was out of character, Job didn’t really feel like this, he was driven to it by being pushed into a corner by his friends, he comes out all guns blazing, he sees now what he is up against and realises and there will be and improvement, therefore, in the character of Job because of this.

And Eliphaz, you’ve got something to answer for. V 8, “Take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams and go to my servant Job. Offer for yourselves a burnt offering and my servant Job will pray for you, and him will I accept lest I deal with you after your folly,” lest I become the God of ‘exact retribution,’ and your stupidity meets an immediate response.’ That was their folly wasn’t it? this ridiculous doctrine of ‘exact retribution,’ ‘Well, just be glad that that doctrine isn’t true Eliphaz or you wouldn’t be standing here much longer. And if you go and offer the offering, well, I will forgive you. You offer that sacrifice, Job will pray for you and I will forgive you.’

So V 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went, and did according as Yahweh commanded them: and Yahweh also accepted Job.” I mean they were brethren, of course they did it, they learned something as well, didn’t they? And V 10, “Yahweh returned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends, and gave him twice as much as he had before. “And V 12, that means, 4,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, a thousand yoke of oxen, a thousand she-asses, I mean, everything was doubled and V 13, he had seven sons and three daughters. And he names the three girls in V 14, the names that you can see there, but there’s a problem isn’t there? Because he has only got ten children, he had ten children that he lost in Ch 1, what’s happened to them? Ah! People are different to animals, the first ten of course will be in the resurrection, Job will have twenty children, when he walks into the kingdom of God, but not just yet, not twenty children in the rest of this life-time.  “In all of the land, there were none so fair as the daughters of Job” it says, and after this, V 16, Job lived 140 years. Well, if that is a doubling of life, perhaps it was that Job was 70 years old when these calamities fell upon him, by no means a long time in the truth. He saw his sons and his sons sons, even four generations. What does that say? He became a great tree, with roots spreading out to the waters and a great canopy over his family. So Job died, being old and full of days, at I suppose, 210 years old. A great man, brothers and sisters, became even greater, and as the divine author was to say, “Hast thou considered my servant Job.”

Transcription by Fay Berry 2017

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