Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Job & Jesus | The Writings | Job 29-31

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Job is a difficult book to read. With all the suffering, confusion, and doubt, it would be easy for us to get lost, forgetting the bigger story of Scripture. In today's episode, Jensen shares how Job 29-31 gives us a glimpse of hope in a dark story, as it foreshadows the coming of our true King, Jesus. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Job 29-31

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. Today, we have three chapters of the Book of Job to cover. So far in the Book of Job, we've walked through a lot. God has allowed Satan to test the faith of Job, a faithful servant of God, by sending trials and suffering. We've seen him lose everything. We've heard his friends attempt to convince him that his suffering is a result of his own sin, that he's been forsaken by God. His friends and the people in his community all assume that the

suffering that Job has endured has been of his own doing. You see, in that time, it was often believed that to suffer in such a way, to have God allow such horrible things must have meant that you had done something to deserve it. And yet, as he heard their words, as he suffered, as he has endured, doubt and misery, we have seen Job remain faithful. In the chapters, Right before hours, Job has given his final response to his friends' attempt at counseling him through suffering. And then, beginning in Chapter 29, Job gives his final summary of his defense. When the world sees his suffering as proof of his sin, proof of God's judgment on him, we see Job lay out his final defense before God, and he does this in three sections.

Chapter 29, we see Job reflect on who he was and the friendship he had with God before his suffering. Later in Chapter 30, we see Job mourning his new status, mourning the mockery he endures, mourning the loss of closeness with God. And finally, in Chapter 31, we see Job giving a long list of the ways that he has been upright, the ways he has remained faithful to the covenants he's made with God. And these three sections altogether are Job's thursday. final summary of his beliefs and defense surrounding all that has happened to him. This is a righteous man speaking, but he's still human. We see later in the book of Job that he must repent of times that

he's spoken about things that he didn't fully understand. And so, as we look at these verses, I'm not interested in looking for examples of exactly how you and I should respond to suffering in our lives. I'm not sure that's the point of these chapters. Instead, I'm very interested in the ways that this defense foreshadows another man who would endure great and undeserved suffering. Looking at chapter 29, we see Job indicate his closeness with God. Verse 2. Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness. As I was in my prime when the friendship of God was upon my tent, when the Almighty was yet with me,

when my children were all around me, when my steps were washed with butter, and the rock poured out from me streams of oil. So Job is remembering a day when he had a deep relationship and connection with God. His favor was upon him, and he enjoyed friendship and blessings from God. Later, Job recounts the kind of man he was in his community.

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 I made him drop his prey from his teeth. So Job clearly had a position of power in his community,

and he used it to do good. I'm sure you can already notice in his language, the way that he speaks about his actions are very reminiscent of how we speak of Jesus. Righteousness, father to the needy, eyes to the blind, feet to the lame. And then to further solidify this, Job finishes chapter 29 saying,

I chose their way and sat as chief, and I lived like a king among his troops, like the one who comforts mourners. He is saying that he was like a king. He was a comforter. He was respected. Job is a ruler. He had a deep lasting connection with God.

He enacted justice and cared for the needy. These are all things that we know to be true of Jesus. Jesus is the son of God. He lived in deep communion with the Father. He used his ministry on earth to bring healing to humanity, sight to the blind, to free the oppressed. He came to live among us so that he could become the true king that creation needed. But don't just take my word for it. In Luke 418, we see Jesus read in a synagogue from a passage in Isaiah. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind. to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And then he says this scripture is fulfilled in their hearing, which seems like weird wording, but in saying that, he's just claiming to be the one that Isaiah spoke about in this passage. He's claiming that he is the promised Messiah, that he is the son of man, the coming king, the one God promised would extend David's line as king forever. The one who would bring sight to the blind good news and liberty to the oppressed. This is a huge claim, but it's a true claim, a claim only Jesus fully God and fully man can make. And so as we read chapter 29 with all of scripture in mind, Job should point

us forward to Jesus, to the one who would come who wasn't just able to bring sight and free the oppressed in his local community, but who would do it for all of creation. One who wasn't just like a king, but who was the long-awaited and promised king of the king. of the whole world. Continuing in chapter 30, we immediately see a shift in tone. Instead of remembering the good days, Job is now squarely in the present, squarely in the pain and suffering of agony. And he's just claimed that he was like a king and that the people looked to him and respected him. And now he opens this chapter saying, but now they laugh at me. And later, and now I have become their song. I am a byword to them. They abhor me. They keep aloof from me. They do not.

hesitate to spit at the side of me. The very people that he was good to, the very people who Job cared for, now mocked him, spit at him, hated him. In that passage, in Luke 4 when Jesus claims to be the son of God, the long-awaited Messiah, when he claims to be the one who would redeem and save Israel and all of creation, the people that he's speaking to do not take his claim well. Luke 4, verse 28, when they heard these things all in the synagogue, were filled with wrath, and they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built so that they could throw him down the cliff. The people are angry, so angry that they try to kill Jesus. And this isn't the last time.

Jesus' ministry is marked by many of these moments, until the very end when he is finally killed by the very people he came to save, mocked, laughed at, hated, rejected, and murdered. The injustice of Job being mocked and scorned by the people he had cared for and protected should clearly point us to the injustice that Jesus faced. The God of all creation coming to live among his people. The people he created, he protected, he sustained and loved, the people he came to heal, to free only to be mocked, rejected, and murdered by them. The connection can be seen even more clearly in verses 16 to 23.

The only place in these chapters where we see Job speaking directly to God, he says, I cry to you for help, and you do not answer me. I stand, and you only look at me. So Job looks to God, cries out to him in the midst of injustice, and God does not respond. Not yet anyway. There's silence, and as we read all of Chapter 30, we can hear the anguish that Job feels from this. He's darkened, in turmoil, weeping, grieved, abandoned. And we can't help but be reminded of Jesus on the cross with a sign above him declaring him king

being murdered for his claim to be the son of God. He cries out to God, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus, the son of God, king of creation, forsaken by his father for the sake of sinners. There was no rescue for Jesus. In order for God to rescue his people to be their king he had to face death, face suffering, face mockery, face separation with the Father, in order that we might never know the loneliness and despair of being forsaken by our Heavenly Father. Now Job's final chapter of his defense is an appeal to God to be faithful to him because he has been faithful to the covenant he's made. He goes through a long list of all the ways he's been faithful,

the good he's done, and in doing so, he's further highlighting the injustice of what has been done. Now Job isn't saying that if you do good, then you should only get blessings in return from God. He's merely defending himself against the claim that his suffering is a result of his sin, of God turning against him. He's saying that despite being a sinful human, he has remained faithful to God. He has upheld his covenant. He's found his refuge in God. And so there must be some other reason for his suffering. As I read, I couldn't help but be reminded of the only truly perfect human who suffered on behalf of a broken, fallen, sinful creation. 2 Corinthians 5 tells us, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin,

so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Jesus faced suffering, was rejected by man, mocked and forsaken by God, not because he deserved it, but so that you and I could stand before God righteous. We are righteous before God because Jesus was truly good, truly perfect, truly righteous. He suffered for our sake. The injustice of the death of Jesus should humble us. He did not deserve it, and yet, through it, all of creation found redemption. Job's defense, his suffering, should remind us that like Job, we are sinful.

But if we are faithful followers of Jesus Christ, if we hide our self, in his righteousness, if we depend on his sacrifice, if we seek after his kingdom, then we too can stand blameless before a holy God. We too can be seen as righteous, not because of our own actions, but because of the goodness of who Jesus is and the injustice of his death, a sinless man dying for the sins of the whole world. This Old Testament book should remind us of the hope of the gospel. We have a good king who came to to bring sight to the blind, free the oppressed and bring redemption to all of creation, put your hope in Him. In the midst of suffering, in the midst of injustice, you are not alone.

You have hope because Jesus faced death and secured a place for you to live alongside him in His kingdom forever.