The book of Job tells the story of a good man overwhelmed by troubles. He is stripped of his wealth, his family, his health. He does not know why God has done this to him. Only the reader knows that God is trying to prove to the Devil that Job’s faith is genuine. Three friends come to console him in his misery, and the four engage in a long discussion. The friends try to explain what has happened by connecting Job’s sufferings with his sins. Job rejects their theory. Instead of accepting their advice to repent and so make peace with God, Job insists on his own innocence and questions the justice of God’s treatment.

At this point a new character, Elihu, appears and makes four speeches which he thinks will solve the problem; but this does not seem to make any difference. Eventually the Lord Himself addresses Job. These speeches change Job’s attitude, for he responds with contrite submission. In the end, God….restores his property and happiness.

Upon this simple plot an unknown writer of superlative genius has erected a monumental work. The most persistent questions of the relationship of men to God have been given powerful theological treatment in verse whose majesty and emotion are unsurpassed in any literature, ancient or modern.

–Francis I. Anderson

Anderson, Francis I. Job: An Introduction and Commentary. Tyndale Old Testament Commentary. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008.

Let us remember what we ought to expect of the normal Christian life.  

– Warfare. Each believer is a battlefield, and the battle is sometimes dark. Let us be honest about that and not be surprised.

– Waiting. We are to be full of prayer, longing, yearning, passionate, even desperate prayer, as we wait for God to act.

– Humbling. When we are brought low, it is a mark of God’s mercy that we may learn to lean on him alone.

– Acceptance or justification. Here and now we may know God has accepted us, and we belong to him forever.

– Blessing in the end. When the Lord returns, he will shower such blessing on us that we will not be able to contain it.  

This is the message of Job 42 in the Bible.  

—Christopher Ash  

Source: Content taken from Trusting God in the Darkness: A Guide to Understanding the Book of Job by Christopher Ash, ©2021. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. 

Job is a fireball book. It is a staggeringly honest book. It is a book that knows what people actually say and think—and not just what they say publicly in church. It knows what people say behind closed doors and in whispers, and it knows what we say in our tears. It is not merely an academic book. If we listen to it with any care, it will touch, trouble, and unsettle us at a deep level.

—Christopher Ash

Source: Content taken from Trusting God in the Darkness: A Guide to Understanding the Book of Job by Christopher Ash, ©2021. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

We face hard questions like this in the book of Job. But there are two ways to ask these questions. We may ask them as “armchair questions,” or we may ask them as “wheelchair questions.” We ask them as “armchair questions” if we ourselves are remote from suffering. As Shakespeare said, “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.”[1] … We grapple with God with “wheelchair questions” when we do not hold this terror cheap, when we ourselves or those we love are suffering. Job asks the “wheelchair questions.” 

1. William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, 2.2.1

—Christopher Ash 

Source: Content taken from Trusting God in the Darkness: A Guide to Understanding the Book of Job by Christopher Ash, ©2021. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Job is forty-two chapters long. We may consider that rather an obvious observation. But the point is this: in his wisdom God has given us a very long book, and he has done so for a reason. It is easy just to read or preach the beginning and the end and to skip rather quickly over the endless arguments in between as if it wouldn’t much matter if they weren’t there…  

But God has given us forty-two chapters! Why? Well, maybe because when the suffering question and the “where is God?” question and the “what kind of God . . . ?” question are asked from the wheelchair, they cannot be answered on a postcard. If we ask, “What kind of God allows this kind of world?” God gives us a forty-two-chapter book. Far from saying, “The message of Job can be summarized on a postcard, in a Tweet, or on an SMS, and here it is,” he says, “Come with me on a journey, a journey that will take time. There is no instant answer—take a spoonful of Job, just add boiling water, and you’ll know the answer.” Job cannot be distilled. It is a narrative with a very slow pace (after the frenetic beginning) and long delays. Why? Because there is no instant working through grief, no quick fix to pain, no message of Job in a nutshell. God has given us a forty-two-chapter journey with no satisfactory bypass.

—Christopher Ash   

Source: Content taken from Job: The Wisdom of the Cross by Christopher Ash, ©2014. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

“Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” 

—James 5:10, 11 NIV 

We do have some help in that from the New Testament, James 5:11. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings that the Lord is full of compassion and merciful. So if you ever doubted what the point of the book of Job is, read James 5:11.

—John Piper

Source: John Piper. © Desiring God Foundation. Source: desiringGod.org. Quoted from his message, “Holding on to Your Faith in the Midst of Suffering.” 

You know, there was one thing about which the three friends and Job totally agreed. And it’s the one thing that Christians today don’t agree with. These four—and you can include Elihu here, and you can include Job’s wife here—when they grapple with how to solve the problem of suffering never call God’s sovereignty into question, never. That’s the first thing we call into question. They had other questions: Is he good? Is he righteous? Is he just? But, is he in charge?—never [questioned that].

—John Piper

Source: John Piper. © Desiring God Foundation. Source: desiringGod.org. Quoted from his message, “Job: When the Righteous Suffer, Part 1.”

What distinguishes a Job-like ordeal from other kinds of suffering is the intensity of the pain and its inexplicableness. A Job-like ordeal is one in which it is impossible to keep a stiff upper lip and just keep going, and one in which the pain is so extreme that it’s impossible to imagine or even desire any return to normalcy. Any reversal of your fortunes seems pathetically inadequate to the loss you have suffered. A Job-like ordeal is also one in which our pain simply does not make sense. We try again and again to explain why we are suffering, and like waves crashing against a rock, every explanation fails.

—Eric Ortlund

Source: Content taken from Suffering Wisely and Well by Eric Ortlund, ©2022. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. 

Profound suffering involves experiencing something so deep and disruptive that it dominates our consciousness and threatens to overwhelm us, often tempting us to lose hope that our lives can ever be good again.

—Mark Talbot

Source: Content taken from When the Stars Disappear by Mark Talbot, ©2020. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

So many people are mad at God and so many pastors are telling them it is okay. It is never okay to be mad at God. That is, it is ok to say you are mad at God if you are mad at God. In other words, don’t compound the first sin with hypocrisy. The psalmist didn’t and Jeremiah didn’t. Never right to be mad at God. It is right to say you are mad at God if you are mad at God. And then repent twice. Well, once. Twice if you don’t say it. 

—John Piper 

Source: John Piper. © Desiring God Foundation. Source: desiringGod.org. Quoted from his message, “Holding on to Your Faith in the Midst of Suffering.”

Satan is after our joyful faith in God and if he can ruin it, he will make God look worthless to the world. Every time somebody forsakes God for the world or gets mad at God when part of the world is taken away from them, they highlight the world as valuable. Every time somebody stays with God when the world is taken away and praises God when the world is taken away, they highlight the value and glory of God.

—John Piper

Source: John Piper. © Desiring God Foundation. Source: desiringGod.org. Quoted from his message, “Holding on to Your Faith in the Midst of Suffering.”

The more I have bashed my head against the text of Job year after year, the more deeply convinced I have become that the book ultimately makes no sense without the obedience of Jesus Christ, his obedience to death on a cross. Job is not everyman; he is not even every believer. There is something desperately extreme about Job. He foreshadows one man whose greatness exceeded even Job’s, whose sufferings took him deeper than Job, and whose perfect obedience to his Father was only anticipated in faint outline by Job. The universe needed one man who would lovingly and perfectly obey his heavenly Father in the entirety of his life and death, by whose obedience the many would be made righteous (Romans 5:19).   

We are probably right to view Job as a prophet. James says to suffering Christians, “As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets. … You have heard of the steadfastness of Job” (James 5:10, 11 ESV). If Job is a prophet, then at the heart of his life was “the Spirit of Christ” indicating within him something about “the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” (1 Peter 1:11 ESV). Sometimes for the prophets this meant living out in anticipation something of the sufferings of Christ… For Job, perhaps supremely among the prophets, the call of God on his life was to anticipate the perfect obedience of Christ.   

—Christopher Ash   

Source: Content taken from Job: The Wisdom of the Cross by Christopher Ash, ©2014. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

But if Job is fulfilled in Jesus, every follower of Jesus is called to follow in the footsteps of Job. Job foreshadows Jesus, and the disciple cannot avoid the shadow. As Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you [plural], that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you [singular] that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31, 32 ESV). 

Jesus did not pray that his disciples would be spared the sifting, that Satan would be forbidden his demand. Rather he expected the demand would be granted, as it had been for Job. And he prays that in this painful sifting, Simon’s faith may not fail. We ought to expect this. Every morning we ought to wake up and say to ourselves, “There is a vicious, dark, spiritual battle being waged over me today.” Satan is very busy; wherever on earth there is a believer walking with God in loving fear, God says, “Look, there’s a believer,” and Satan says, “May I attack him/her? I want to prove whether this is a real believer.” And in one way or another, the Lord gives permission. And we ought not to be surprised, as though something strange were happening to us (1 Peter 4:12). 

So here is one inescapable element of the normal Christian life: warfare. That expectation relates to our circumstances. The second relates to our attitude of heart. 

—Christopher Ash  

Source: Content taken from Trusting God in the Darkness: A Guide to Understanding the Book of Job by Christopher Ash, ©2021. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

As so often is true with us, when Job came into the presence of God, he forgot the speech he thought he would make (see Job 40:4-5)! There was no arguing with God. Finally, Job went flat down on his face and answered God: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2 ESV). Then comes the great confession: “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:5-6 NIV).

This is the only place to learn God’s lessons—on your face, with your mouth shut! This is the victory of submissive faith. When we bow to God’s will, we find God’s way. Stoop to conquer. Bend to obey. This is the lesson of Job.

—Henrietta Mears

Source: This content is from What the Bible Is All About, written by Henrietta Mears. Copyright © 1953, 2011 by Gospel Light. Copyright assigned to Tyndale House Publishers, 2015. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. 

Elihu is on to something that the other friends just did not seem to understand at all. Elihu’s basic message to Job, and to us, is that Job was wrong to get in God’s face and criticize him. And Job was wrong to keep saying, “I’m not sinful, I’m not sinful, I’m not sinful” which was a knee-jerk response to their accusations that the only possible solution to this great suffering is great sin. Elihu has another thing to contribute. Namely, God loves you. He’s not your enemy. He’s coming not only to vindicate his worth in your life; he’s coming also to purify you more deeply than you’ve ever known, and he will reveal more things of himself than you have ever, ever seen.  

—John Piper

Source: John Piper. © Desiring God Foundation. Source: desiringGod.org. Quoted from his message, “Job: When the Righteous Suffer, Part 1.”