Sovereignty in Satan’s Challenge
We often go to the book of Job to learn about suffering. But would it surprise you to learn that the book of Job is more about God’s sovereignty than suffering? And would it surprise you to learn that even the ancient men who are the subjects of the book of Job used faulty inferences about God to build a belief system that was in error? Perhaps Job himself believed the same things that his friends believed about the divine purpose of suffering until his personal experience shook that belief to its foundation. Let’s summarize how the book begins.
“There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” (Job 1:1 ESV).
The book’s first verse teaches some basic things about Job. First, we learn about his moral character and his relationship with God. He was a man who recognized the sovereignty of God and exercised his free will to serve God and live according to the law God gave to him. The passage tells us that he feared God, and this fear caused him to turn away from evil. What is evil? It is whatever a sovereign God defines as evil. Job was a man who knew how God wanted him to live, and he brought himself into submission to the one who had the right to direct his life.
“There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east.” (Job 1:2-3 ESV).
The book goes on to detail the wealth of Job. He lived in the same part of the world that Abraham came from, known as the cradle of civilization. This means that Job was not merely a wealthy chieftain of some remote or obscure tribe. He was indeed one of the wealthiest men in the world. In verses 4 and 5, we see just how much Job thought about God’s sovereignty in that he would make sacrifices for his children, “For Job said, ‘It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.’ Thus, Job did continually” (vs. 5). Job knew who God was and who man was in relation to Him. Job understood that God was sovereign and wanted to ensure that He protected his own children as much as he could from falling before the Lord. How often have we prayed for an erring child or for God’s favor upon them? In essence, this is what Job was doing for his children.
Then the scene shifts to heaven, which is a scene ripe for all kinds of inferences we can draw. We are not often given many glimpses into the spiritual realm, let alone given a narrative of what the throne room of heaven is like. In verses 6-12, we get that picture. God is in heaven with His angelic beings, and who should happen to make his way before God? None other than the accuser of God’s people (Revelation 12:10), Satan himself!
Now, our human curiosity wants to know more details, doesn’t it? Does Satan still accuse man before God like he did with Job and Peter (Luke 22:31), or did that end when he was cast down (Revelation 12:10)? I don’t know. Are there times when our suffering comes specifically because Satan asks God for permission, or not? I suspect that still happens, but we don’t know how rarely these situations may have arisen. Perhaps, Satan only spends time before God with prominent people like Job or Peter. It’s a fascinating thing to consider, but at the end of the day, we really do not know how much of this still goes on, and if it does, how many times we will be the subject of a cosmic spiritual contest between God and Satan. But we know it happened here, between God and Satan, over the faithfulness of Job.
“And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?” (Job 1:8 ESV).
Satan’s response is, “Yes, I have! Of course, he’s faithful to You. You made him rich and powerful. You have built a hedge around him! But if You stretch out Your hand and touch him, take everything away, he will have no reason to follow You, and he will curse You to Your face!”
God’s response to Satan was, “Okay, you have control over everything he has. Just don’t touch him.” With that, Satan left to rain down tremendous suffering upon Job.
As we will see in this book, Job will demand an audience with God. He will want to take the stand to defend himself when all the evil befalls him, but he will lament that no one can see God and how impossible it is to stand before an invisible God. It never occurs to him that God has already granted what he pleads for in this book. Satan has made a charge against Job, and God is allowing Job to defend his good name. The trial that Job begs for has actually started, even though he doesn’t know it.
Before we get to the suffering of Job and how he and his friends deal with it, let’s examine the showcase of God’s sovereignty in the first few verses of the book. First, we see God’s recognized sovereignty by Job himself. This rich and powerful man understood that despite being one of the most powerful men on earth, he was nothing compared to the God of heaven. Job saw God as sovereign over him. Job realized God had the inherent right to rule over him, tell him what to do, and God had the power to enforce the rules, so he brought himself into subjection to God. He even feared God enough to take action to intercede on behalf of his children before God.
And in the scene in heaven, we see God pitted against Satan. In this scene, we see God’s sovereignty further displayed. Notice that it was Satan who had to submit to God. Satan could not act without God’s explicit permission, and once that permission was given, Satan had to act within the limitations of that permission. We know that Satan has no regard for God and does everything he can to thwart God, but even he dares not act without the expressed consent of the sovereign God.
So, Satan goes off to do his worst. He acts fully within the limitations God placed upon him, but he stops at the threshold of the limitation not to touch Job’s physical body.
In almost immediate succession, everything of value was stripped away from Job with God’s permissive blessing. Two bands of raiders take away his oxen, donkeys, and camels, killing all of Job’s servants, leaving only one from each attack as the bearer of bad news to Job. In another instance, the fire of God rained down from heaven to burn all of his sheep and kill his servants, except the lone bearer of bad news. Finally, as all of these servants were delivering the terrible news that Job had just gone from being the wealthiest man in the world to becoming bankrupt in the twinkling of an eye, the worst information yet is delivered by the lone survivor of the most tragic event. A great wind, tornado perhaps, struck the house where all ten of Job’s children were feasting, and they were all killed.
Can you imagine the numbness that must have washed over Job? Here was a man who had done everything right, served God in fear and humility, and lost everything of value to him, including his children. Would Satan’s prediction about Job come true? Was Job’s faith and obedience in God only there because God had bought it, or was it a genuine faith and fear of the Lord? We soon get the answer:
“Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.” (Job 1:20-22 ESV).
This is what an understanding of God’s sovereignty means in our lives. It doesn’t mean we don’t serve God unless He first serves us. It means we bow down to Him in fear and reverence because of who He is, not what He can do for us. It means that we see God as our supreme authority because He is the Potter, and we are His clay. It is God’s prerogative how to distribute His blessings, and we are owed nothing from Him. This is the ultimate understanding of God’s sovereignty for our lives. He has the power to give and take away, and He can do what He wants with that power. And regardless of how that choice affects me, He is worthy of our worship. Rather than curse God to His face as Satan had predicted he would do, Job humbles himself before the Lord and worships. Why? Because he knew God is worthy of worship because of who He is, not because of what He can do for me. He understood the second truth of God’s sovereignty: God answers to no man, no power, or any other authority; therefore, “Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.”
Round two in heaven between God and Satan begins over Job. Satan appears again in heaven and presents himself before God, and God again presents Job and his faithfulness to Satan. God describes Job the same way He did before but adds an interesting commentary to His description:
“And the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you incited me against him to destroy him without reason.” (Job 2:3 ESV).
We will talk more about this later when we discuss the foreknowledge of God and His sovereignty in chapter 8, but it’s interesting that had Satan not laid this challenge before God, it didn’t seem that it was God’s purpose to do any of this to Job. God lays this squarely at Satan’s feet, not at His own, although He had allowed it, which is the only way all this suffering could have happened to Job. But Satan sees his opportunity to prove God wrong about Job:
“Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, he is in your hand; only spare his life.” (Job 2:4-6 ESV).
“Okay,” Satan says to God (paraphrase), “Job still holds fast to his integrity because You have protected his body. Let me touch his flesh and bones and see what will become of his integrity! He will curse You to Your face.” God then gives Satan permission to reach out and touch Job’s flesh but again places a limitation upon him that he must obey. God told Satan that he could touch him but not kill him. And Satan gleefully leaves to do what He believes will cause Job to sin before God; at least, he would do his worst to make that happen.
Time out. Is there anything woven into this interaction between Satan and God that illustrates the sovereignty of God? Sure, we see the same things as before. Satan must receive permission, and he has to stay within the limitations placed on him by God. This time, the limitation was that he couldn’t kill Job. One thing that jumps out to me is that unlike men with our limited free will, when God placed a limitation upon Satan, Satan could not choose whether or not to obey. God has been giving man limitations since the day He created man, but man has been given the limited free will to obey or not to obey. When God lays down limitations upon Satan, Satan must comply with those limitations. Otherwise, Satan would have touched Job’s flesh the first time to push him over the edge or killed him the second time when it became apparent that Job would not sin before God. This is God’s sovereignty in practice.
Satan strikes Jobs with boils, or “loathsome sores,” as the ESV translated it, from the soles of his foot to the crown of his head. Do you ever wonder if it frustrated Satan that he could not reach out to take Jobs’ life? Nonetheless, if Job had to live, Satan would make him wish he were dead. We see this in the next chapter:
“After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. And Job said: “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.” (Job 3:1-3 ESV).
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. There was no place on his body where he could rest to find relief. Verse 8 of chapter 2 says that he sat in soft ashes and scraped his sores with broken pottery shards to find a modicum of relief. Think about everything that Job has had to endure in a short period: he lost his wealth, his power, his respect, his children, and now his health. Satan has taken everything away from him… well, almost everything:
“Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” (Job 2:9 ESV).
Satan must have been giddy with joy when Mrs. Job gave her husband this advice. The accuser of the brethren did know human nature well. I am too afraid to think of how I would have reacted if I was in Job’s situation because, to my shame, I have said a lot worse when faced with a lot less. And though Mrs. Job was wrong and sinful in urging her husband to curse God and die, I understand why she did it. That doesn’t mean that she was justified or that her sinful comment should be overlooked. But you can understand when a grief-stricken mother of ten who lost her children, lost her means of livelihood, and has a husband hanging on to life by a thread is grief-stricken. And when we face grief-stricken people, aren’t we quick to give grace and slow to condemn? But you have to appreciate Job’s mindset, don’t you? This is a mindset that can only be where it is if you understand the sovereignty of your Creator, Who gives and takes away as He pleases:
“But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” (Job 2:10 ESV).
So, Job wins. God wins. Satan loses. But it is not over. May I propose an inference as to why this suffering still plays out in forty more chapters? We ask ourselves, why is it that Job has to continue to endure suffering? Let me be clear that I do not know because God does not say. But there are a couple of reasons that may be true, or it may be a reason that we will never know. Perhaps God is giving Satan time to weaken and wear down Job. We have all been there before, haven’t we? We face a new challenge with strength and resolve, but as time drags on with no relief in sight, we start to lose faith.
“Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” (Hebrews 2:1 ESV).
Few things cause us to drift away more than when we have to endure trials. Perhaps this is what Satan was angling for. Or, maybe God knew that Job and his friends, whom we are about to meet, needed to learn a lesson about His sovereignty that they didn’t already know. It seemed that they had made a couple of assumptions about God that were not true, which led them to false ideas about who God was, which was a challenge to His sovereignty. Maybe God was going to take this terrible thing that Satan had incited Him to do against Job and glorify His name and sovereignty in a way that only this circumstance could accomplish. Whether or not this is God’s purpose in allowing the suffering to continue, it was undoubtedly a result, as we see in the following 40 chapters. This is why I say that the book of Job is more a book on God’s sovereignty than a book on suffering.
How Three Friends Despise God’s Sovereignty
In Chapter 3, the stress of his shattered life comes bearing down on Job. It’s not a chapter of disbelief or from a man whose faith is weakening. It comes from the soul of a man burdened and facing the reality of his broken existence. Job went from the pinnacle of life in every way to a shattered downfall where he lost his wealth, security, respect (as we will soon see), and children. When we face loss, God does not expect us to take it stoically. He understands the pain that loss brings to us. He grieves with us, and it hurts God to see us hurting. I fear that sometimes, we put undue burdens on our shoulders as we try to stoically cope with suffering as though any sign of sorrow or despair over our circumstances is somehow a slight against God or a chink in our armor.
When Jesus suffered because of His imminent death and the cup of wrath and sorrow He would have to endure on the cross, the text tells us just how intense His prayer was:
“And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” (Luke 22:44 ESV).
If Jesus wasn’t immune to having an emotional and physical reaction to intense suffering, then perhaps we need to show ourselves and others grace when we endure our own painful moments of suffering. And it wasn’t just for Himself that Jesus felt this kind of pain; He also empathized with others. In the shortest verse in the Bible, we read in John 11:35 that Jesus wept. His friend Lazarus had just died, but Jesus knew He was going to raise His friend from the dead, and in a matter of moments, He would be speaking to and sharing a meal with Lazarus that very day. A close examination of the text shows us why Jesus was full of emotion so intense that it made Him cry:
“Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.” (John 11:32-33 ESV).
It seemed to be the pain He saw in His friends which caused Jesus to be deeply moved in His spirit and greatly troubled Him. So, as we read Job 3 and see Job curse the day he was born and speak about how bad his life was, we need to give Him the same grace that the Lord would give him; the same grace that the Lord gives us when we are hurting and go through the process of coping with our pain.
It’s important to note that 3 of Job’s friends had come to him when they heard of his tragedy. They came to comfort him. As they approached, Satan had done such a number on Job’s body that they didn’t even recognize Job. They all wept with him, and then the text tells us that they all sat with him in silence for seven days. Job broke the silence with the curse he made on the day of his birth in Chapter 3. After this, his friends begin to speak.
Before we look at their words, it will help us to understand the prevailing wisdom that people in the days of Job had about God and how He interacted with people. We will see this borne out in the advice and accusations we see them make to Job. But it might be helpful to understand that up until now, it is likely Job shared the same beliefs his friends shared.
From the advice his friends gave to Job, we learn that they believed in a straightforward reward/punishment paradigm between God and man. If you obeyed God, He would reward you. If you sinned against God, He would punish you. Therefore, by looking at whether people prospered or suffered, you could tell whether they were sinful or obedient to God. Because of how Job handled his friends’ accusations against him, I suspect that he, too, probably believed in this reward/punishment paradigm. But the problem came when his personal experience didn’t fit into this paradigm. He knew he was faithful and righteous. He knew he had not sinned against God, yet, he was suffering in such a devastating way that it was hard to believe that his lot was caused by anything other than the hand of God against him. Here is the crux of the belief Job and his friends struggled with:
God was sovereign as the Creator and all-powerful in the affairs of men.
God rewarded good behavior and punished evil behavior.
Job’s suffering was so complete that it must have come by the hand of God.
Here is where Job and his friends diverge, which we will look at in detail throughout this chapter. Job’s friends kept the convention of the paradigm that they believed in. Therefore, the only reasonable conclusion was that Job’s suffering resulted from sin against God. The utter harshness and completeness of his suffering meant Job’s sin was great against God. The only remedy and course of action for Job, then, was to confess his sin, repent, and God would then shower His blessings upon Job again.
Until now, it is quite possible that Job believed in a similar punishment/reward paradigm. Some of his responses lend to this conclusion with Job. For example, when Zophar stated the obvious in his eyes, he told Job:
“If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, and let not injustice dwell in your tents. Surely then you will lift up your face without blemish; you will be secure and will not fear. You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters that have passed away.” (Job 11:14-16 ESV).
Zophar reminded Job about this common belief that God punished the wicked and rewarded the just. He encourages Job to become just, and God would reward Him. Notice when Job responds to Zophar, he doesn’t argue the basic assumptions of this belief. He responds rather sarcastically, reminding Zophar that he is not teaching Job anything new:
“Then Job answered and said: “No doubt you are the people, and wisdom will die with you. But I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you. Who does not know such things as these?” (Job 12:1-3 ESV).
Job struggles with aligning his suffering with his belief. In all honesty, Job has no clue what he did that could have been so bad to bring down this harsh judgment from God. As he racks his brain to connect the dots between his beliefs and circumstances, Job starts to say things that challenge this paradigm. When he does this, the attacks against him grow bolder and harsher from his three friends, and Job responds just as obstinately in his own defense as they do in their attacks against him. To illustrate, look at these exchanges. In exasperation, Eliphaz quits beating around the bush and accuses Job of specific sins:
“Is not your evil abundant? There is no end to your iniquities. For you have exacted pledges of your brothers for nothing and stripped the naked of their clothing. You have given no water to the weary to drink, and you have withheld bread from the hungry. The man with power possessed the land, and the favored man lived in it. You have sent widows away empty, and the arms of the fatherless were crushed.” (Job 22:5-9 ESV).
Later, Job responds to these attacks by reminding them that not only isn’t he guilty of these charges, but his actions testify to his righteousness:
“When the ear heard, it called me blessed, and when the eye saw, it approved, because I delivered the poor who cried for help, and the fatherless who had none to help him. The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my justice was like a robe and a turban. I was eyes to the blind and feet to the lame. I was a father to the needy, and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know. I broke the fangs of the unrighteous and made him drop his prey from his teeth.” (Job 29:11-17 ESV).
So, you have Job and his three friends who seem to believe God rewards the good and punishes the evil. Job’s friends, however, see Job’s suffering as evidence of his evil. On the other hand, Job knows he has been righteous and has done nothing to deserve punishment. And this sets up the very action from God that will cause the sovereign Creator’s anger to burn against the three friends as well as take Job to the woodshed for the way he demanded a defense from God.
Do you remember the mistake that the Sadducees made? First, they erred by not knowing the Scriptures and by not knowing God’s power. Job and his friends made the same mistake the Sadducees made when they built a belief system based on faulty inferences.
The friends’ faulty inference was that God always rewarded the just and punished the evil. We know that isn’t true. Proverbs give us truisms that teach wisdom, but these sayings are not absolutes. That is the point of the book of Ecclesiastes.
“Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.” (Ecclesiastes 9:11 ESV).
But we also know that:
“Be assured, an evil person will not go unpunished, but the offspring of the righteous will be delivered.” (Proverbs 11:21 ESV).
The error the friends made is forgetting time and chance play a part in fortune, misfortune, and God’s sovereignty. God’s sovereignty can override time and chance if He so chooses. Job sees his own circumstances and concludes that sometimes bad things happen to good people and sometimes good things happen to bad people. When he makes this observation, it sets his friends off:
“Why do the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power? Their offspring are established in their presence, and their descendants before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, and no rod of God is upon them.” (Job 21:7-9 ESV).
And:
“One dies in his full vigor, being wholly at ease and secure, his pails full of milk and the marrow of his bones moist. Another dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted of prosperity. They lie down alike in the dust, and the worms cover them.” (Job 21:23-26 ESV)
It is to this that Eliphaz makes the specific accusations against Job in chapter 22 we read earlier. We understand what Job and his three friends didn’t understand; we know God does not always punish right away or reward right away. The martyred spirits in Revelation 6:10 cried out, asking when the sovereign God would avenge their blood. And 2 Peter 3:9 reminds us God is longsuffering and doesn’t always punish immediately as He often gives men time to repent and avoid His wrath.
So, putting a stake in the ground with a faulty premise caused the three friends to come to a false conclusion about God. Their misguided belief meant that they laid the blame for Job’s suffering at His feet, and it caused them to falsely accuse an innocent man of doing something he did not do. What was God’s response to this?
“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.” (Job 42:7 ESV).
These men did not recognize the basic understanding of God’s sovereignty, and I fear it is the same sin we are often guilty of committing. We put our stake in the ground with beliefs and inferences about God and then accuse God of evil if He violates these beliefs, or we say God must behave in a specific way because of these beliefs. Sometimes we end up erring because we do not know the Scriptures (though we think we know them), or we do not know the power of God. We must learn from Job’s friends that God always gets the benefit of the doubt from us. We must never say God must act a certain way or not act a certain way, lest He is guilty of evil. This is about as close to blasphemy as we can get, even though we say these things with a clean heart based on the Scriptures we read. Suppose we are in error in our understanding of Scripture or have an incomplete understanding of Scripture. In that case, we end up attacking God’s sovereignty because He does not live up to our inaccurate understanding of His word.
God’s sovereignty means we never lay accusations at His feet and never say God must or must not act a certain way. Neither will we ever say if God acts in a certain way, it is evidence of Him being evil. God is free to tell us what He will or will not do, but respect for a sovereign God means we always know where our boundaries are and never cross them. As we will see in a moment, Job crossed those boundaries, even when he did not accuse God of wrongdoing. There are just some things a created being cannot do to a sovereign God, and accusing Him of evil or demanding that He give a defense for His actions/inactions will always cross the line and cause us to be guilty of profaning His sovereignty.
How Job Crosses The Line With God’s Sovereignty
As we see with the three friends, they were guilty of having a faulty view of how God handles rewards and punishments. This led them to lay the blame for Job’s suffering at God’s feet and to blame an innocent man for something he didn’t do. Proverbs 6:19 says one of the seven things that God hates is a false witness that speaks lies. Whether or not they had malice in their hearts, these men were false witnesses against Job.
But Job was not blameless in this either. However, it is essential to know that Job was not guilty of the same sin that the three friends were guilty of, nor was he guilty of the sin that Satan said he would commit if God removed the hedge from around him. Over and over, we see that Job did not sin against God (Job 1:22; 2:10; 42:7). But while Job always maintained God’s sovereignty and right to give blessings and withhold blessings (Job 2:10), He did feel entitled to demand that God give account for why He was allowing Job to suffer. All of this gives us insight into how Job viewed the sovereignty of God.
First, we see that Job’s acknowledgment of God’s supremacy and sovereignty never wavers. He never uses his innocence to accuse God of being wrong or unjust. He wants to know why he is suffering, and he stands up for his righteousness in his defense. In this, Job is consistent throughout the book. He does not budge from his innocence even when his friends urge, shame, and blame him. This seems to compound the very thing that led to his demands on God to explain His actions. This, in turn, led to the whirlwind scene where God monologs with Job to emphasize His sovereignty to Job. Notice Job’s appeal to God’s power and sovereignty during his suffering:
“If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your mark? Why have I become a burden to you?
Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be.” (Job 7:20-21 ESV).
And…
“How then can I answer him, choosing my words with him? Though I am in the right, I cannot answer him; I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.” (Job 9:14-15 ESV).
Job understands that God is entirely in control. He can and will do all He desires, regardless of what man may say. Over and over, we see this appeal to God’s sovereignty and His power. Job just wants to sit down with God to discuss why this is happening to him. Perhaps, Job thinks, he can lay out his defense, gain the Almighty’s understanding, and convince the Almighty to relent His hand against him. The problem Job falls into is in taking this desire to sit with God from a request and an appeal to God’s mercy at the beginning of the discourse to a full-blown demand of the Almighty to appear before Job and answer for His actions against Job. And this is where Job crosses the line, which prompts God to appear to Him in the whirlwind:
“Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his seat! I would lay my case before him and fill my mouth with arguments. I would know what he would answer me and understand what he would say to me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; he would pay attention to me.” (Job 23:3-6 ESV).
And in a dramatic fashion, we watch Job’s request to speak to God go from an appeal to His mercy to the final crossing of the line that causes Job to make demands of God:
“Oh, that I had one to hear me! (Here is my signature! Let the Almighty answer me!) Oh, that I had the indictment written by my adversary!” (Job 31:35 ESV).
So, God’s issue with Job differed from the issue He had with the three friends. Let’s remind ourselves of the three fundamental truths about God’s sovereignty:
God has inherent authority, power, and ability to do whatever He wants.
God answers to no man, no power, or to any other authority.
God has the right to make the rules and the power to enforce those rules on whomever He chooses.
Job consistently acknowledges the first and third truths about God’s sovereignty. But in this second truth, Job fails miserably. God answers to no man, no power, or to any other authority. In this second truth, God addresses Job, which we will briefly look at in the next section of this chapter. When we do, notice that God does not stand in defense of His actions, as Job demanded of Him. He doesn’t owe Job, or anyone else, an explanation for His actions. In essence, the book of Job is God exerting His sovereignty. God only asks Job what makes him think he can ask or demand anything from the Almighty. And as we see, Job fully and completely gets the point. This happens because Job does understand God’s sovereignty and immediately realizes that he has crossed the line. And he realized this while he was poor, in pain, and the father of 10 precious children who had all died in the prime of their life.
And so, in His sovereignty and in His time, God decides to address Job. But it’s not the address that Job had been seeking.
God Explains His Sovereignty to Job
An old adage says, “Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it.” Man never spoke truer words. Job was about to get what he sought- an audience with the Almighty, except this audience would be held on God’s terms, not Job’s. I say this because what we see play out at the end of the book is something fundamental for us to understand about God’s sovereignty. The sooner we understand this lesson, the better, happier, and more content our lives will be, even in the light of tremendous suffering. And I don’t want it lost on us that when God speaks to him, Job is still suffering tremendously in every way a man can suffer.
Another point to consider is the strong possibility that Job may have never expected God to speak to him at all. Think about how much time must have passed since Job was first afflicted. We have no idea how much time passed before round one and round two of Satan’s assault on Job. And we know there was travel time for his friends to come to him when they heard of Job’s misfortunes. Traveling in their day involved much more than booking the next flight to Ur. And we know they sat silent for a whole week before Job started the dialog. We can read the back and forth quickly, but their conversations may have lasted days, weeks, even months, or more. Perhaps we only have a selection of the entire time they spent together.
My point is that we are often quick to cry out to God, “Why?!” when we are suffering, aren’t we? Perhaps we are a little too quick to make demands on God when we know the chances are nil that He will verbally respond to us. How many of us would think twice before crying out to the Lord in our distress if we were 100% confident that He would respond to us from a whirlwind? At least we would choose our words carefully, wouldn’t we? I’m not convinced that Job expected God to answer his demand for an audience. He was a broken man crying out in his suffering and misery. But we learn that God is sovereign even when we suffer, and we must respect His sovereignty. Even then, He owes us nothing, and we owe Him everything. And so, I think it may have been a surprise to Job when this happens:
“Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind and said: “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.” (Job 38:1-3 ESV).
And so, the monolog of God begins. When it does, the first thing God addresses is a few fundamental truths we often cavalierly pass by. First, when we make any demands of God, we do so from a lack of knowledge. This stems from the theme of this book. God is sovereign, and when we make demands of Him, we speak from an utter lack of knowledge of who He is in relation to who we are. If we had the proper understanding of this fundamental truth, we would never make the demand to begin with. Second, we will never be prepared to contend with the Almighty if He does decide to spar with us verbally. “Dress like a man” is God’s way of saying to Job, “Man up!” God would quickly show Job that he was way out of his element by challenging God in any way.
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements--surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it?” (Job 38:4-5 ESV).
Now, we’re not going to go through every question God asks Job in this section, but verses 4-5 of chapter 38 sum up the line of questioning that God lays before Job. In a nutshell, God asks Job what qualifies him to demand any answers from God at all. In quick succession, God reminds Job that they are as far apart as two beings can be. God was there at the beginning of time, He being responsible for the beginning of time itself. Notice what God does not address with Job:
God does not address Job’s complaint. Nowhere in this monolog does God defend himself to Job. He never mentions Satan’s accusation against Job nor God’s faith in Job.
God does not give Job answers. God doesn’t ease Job’s confusion by making sense of what is happening to him. This stems from the second fundamental truth of sovereignty: God answers to no man, no power, or to any other authority. Even when God blesses Job at the end of the book, we never see God defending Himself to Job.
God does not apologize to Job for his suffering. Apologies imply fault. This is not the same as saying, “I’m sorry that you have to endure this terrible ordeal.” We often use this kind of language as we empathize with people. But God could stop and even prevent Job’s suffering, yet He did not.
So, God never explains to Job why the bad things happened to him. Why do you suppose that is? We have examples in the Bible where God explains why He does or does not do something to people. The main message of the prophets was to explain God’s actions if the people didn’t repent. God over and over told the kings of Israel and Judah why God would send good or evil upon them. So why didn’t He explain the reason these bad things happened to Job? As we said, it is because of the second truth about God’s sovereignty we discussed: God answers to no man, no power, or any other authority. Job had demanded that God explain Himself and answer why He had allowed him to suffer when he was blameless. It is one thing for a sovereign God to choose to explain His actions as a measure of grace to His creation. It is another thing for someone to demand God defend His actions to us. The sovereignty of God meant that God did not have to listen to or explain Himself to Job. Simply, God, in His sovereignty, chose not to answer Job’s demands. And Job understood that. This is why Job placed his hands over his mouth and vowed to withdraw His demands against God. In essence, Job realized that he had overstepped his boundaries with God.
But even in his demand for God to explain Himself, Job acknowledged God was the source of all things and He had the power to do all He wanted. Job believed God controlled all things. Indeed, He wasn’t an impotent God who could not affect the outcomes of men. God’s power and might were never in question in Job’s mind, and neither was His right to do what He wanted to do.
“If I sin, what do I do to you, you watcher of mankind? Why have you made me your mark? Why have I become a burden to you? Why do you not pardon my transgression and take away my iniquity? For now I shall lie in the earth; you will seek me, but I shall not be.” (Job 7:20-21 ESV).
Job’s beef with God had to do with why God acted in His power and sovereignty against him, a righteous man. And when God answered from the whirlwind, God began to demonstrate that He was above Job in every way imaginable. God was sovereign over the heavens, the weather, the earth, the cosmos, and all of creation. Not only was God sovereign over these areas of creation, but God had an intimate understanding of them. With the animals, He feared none; not even the behemoth or leviathan, two animals that man greatly feared and left alone. In fact, of the leviathan, God said,
“Will you play with him as with a bird, or will you put him on a leash for your girls?” (Job 41:5 ESV).
In this, God draws a sharp distinction between Himself and Job. Where a man cannot tame such a mighty, ferocious, and terrifying beast, to God, the leviathan is a pet that He can tame and play with and not fear. And so, the rest of the monolog from God is one thing after another that demonstrates God’s supreme power, His supreme knowledge, and His supreme sovereignty.
Job gets it. I contend that Job all along understood God’s power. But when God speaks, Job finally understands the essence of sovereignty. The last lesson he learned about God was the lesson that God answers to no man or any other authority. The book of Job ends the way we love these stories to end. The suffering hero is rewarded. But in many stories, we don’t see this ending play out on earth this way. In some cases, the suffering hero lies sick and never recovers. Sometimes she never recovers her wealth and dies in poverty and with no honor. Sometimes the hero never has more children after witnessing the devastating loss of his only children.
And so, our question when we read the book of Job is not simply a question of suffering but a question of sovereignty. We may have questions about why things are happening to us, but we must be cautious about where those questions lead. Just because God has the power to change our circumstances or prevent bad things from happening to us doesn’t mean He has to take those actions on our behalf. We pray and ask, but it is God’s choice alone regarding His actions. Perhaps most of the time, we will never know why things happen the way they do in our lives. We may look back over the things we went through and never see a reason or purpose. What does this tell us about God’s sovereignty?
First, it tells us that things may happen for reasons we will never know. And if we did know the reasons, we are not in a position to judge whether God’s reasons are justified or not. This is one of the most challenging things for us to come to grips with when we talk about God’s sovereignty. May I pose a few thoughts that might be hard to wrestle with?
Let’s say the loss of someone I love leads someone I hardly know to understand the Gospel and obey it. Let’s say that God, instead of answering my prayers for health and recovery, instead answers someone else’s prayer for their loved one to be saved. Is it fair that my loved one has to die so that someone else might be saved?
How, you ask, can the death of my loved one lead to the salvation of a stranger? Well, what if a coworker of my loved one is moved by the death to seek answers to spiritual questions they have been struggling with? Who knows- the point isn’t to paint a specific picture but to make the point that we don’t often see the connections between how we may be suffering and how that suffering may intersect with someone we may never know. This is where the principle of God’s sovereignty lies. God doesn’t have to explain things to us, and we don’t get to judge the value of God’s choices that may impact us.
Or here is a real one I struggled with for years. Before God blessed my wife and me with three children in our old age, it was hard for us to watch the news and see how some parents would neglect their children, often leading to the death of a child, and wonder why it was so hard for us to have children and why it seemed so easy for abusive parents to have a litter of children. To my shame, I probably followed Job’s example of wanting God to explain to me how that was fair. I knew He had the power to give children and to make people barren.
It is one thing to say that God has to answer to no one, but it is another thing to accept God’s sovereignty in my life when I don’t understand what doesn’t seem fair to me. The truth is that we may never know the “why,” and all the speculation we do can drive us mad. To understand the lesson of God’s sovereignty we learn from Job, we must come to accept God’s decisions even when we can’t understand the “whys.” Remember,
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV).
Sometimes, as with Job, we may never know the “whys.” That’s when it is all the more important for us to step up in faith and submit to His sovereignty. Job teaches us that God is all-powerful, God controls all, and God never owes us any explanations. It is always incumbent upon us to accept what God does not change in our lives without demanding Him to defend His decisions or without condemning Him for not doing what seems right to us. What helps us do this is remembering that God knows exactly how we feel and we have not fallen through the cracks in His sight, no matter how much pain we may be in. We can always ask, but God chooses whether He will answer or not. If we can learn to live in the sovereignty of God in our lives, then we can endure any hardship, pain, and uncertainty we encounter because we rest in the rock that God is in control, even when we do not see or understand how.
This is the real message we can take away from the book of Job.