Read Job 19

(Our weekday studies beginning today are on the resurrection of Christ.  They will take us right up to the Western celebration of Easter on March 27, 2016.)

Job had what C. S. Lewis called, “the problem of pain”.  What rational explanation was there for suffering in a world created by a good God.  Job’s miserable comforters had no answer in blaming it on Job’s sin (v1-6). If they were right, then Job concluded that God had wronged him, words echoed by many over the generations who have angrily blamed God for their pain.

Job’s friends were, and we are, pursuing the wrong problem.  The problem is not one of pain but of “hope.”  To ask why is there pain does nothing to change the fact that we have pain.  Rather we ought to pursue the question of hope: in our pain do we have a realistic reason for hope?  Pain without hope is deadly to the spirit, soul and body.  But pain with hope is manageable, even beneficial.  

Job complained that God was uprooting his hope like a tree (v7-12).  What he meant was that God was taking away every avenue of hope, avenues that were in fact dead-end streets.  Taken from Job were the false hopes of …

·        fairness or justice (v7); the most blameless man had the greatest pain?

·        escape (v8); there was nothing Job could do to escape his pain.

·        personal glory (v9); Job’s greatness could not protect him from pain.  I am reminded of a great man, years ago, whose final months were spent in a germ-free tent, in an attempt to fend off death.  It was, of course, useless.

There is more.  Job’s pain separated him from every human relationship from which he might derive comfort (v13-20).  We humans so desire a pain-free life that we will eventually tire of comforting others in their pain.  Like Job’s wife we will tell the hurting to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9).  She not only could not fix Job’s pain; she could offer him no hope.  This is persecution (v21-22).

Being stripped of all false hope, Job still found hope (v25-27).  He had resurrection hope.  After death he would see God, a hope that he linked to a living Redeemer who would someday stand on the earth.  Job probably lived in the days of Abraham.  At this time people understood redemption.  

 Passed from generation to generation were facts established with our Edenic parents (Gn 3-4):

·        The entrance of sin into the good creation coincided with the entrance of pain into the lives of God’s good creatures.

·        Death (pain) was the consequence of sin; from the earliest days people were acquainted with this horrible and tragic event.

·        Coincident with sin and death was the promise of a Savior (Gen. 3:15).

·        This salvation would require the shedding of the Savior’s blood (Gen. 4).  This Redeemer would in some way “pay the price” for the sinner’s sin.

Now hear Job’s words: “How my heart yearns within me!”  The soul in pain must have hope that is real.  Job’s hope was anchored in a Redeemer who would shed His blood for the sinner, and yet still live!  Job’s words and faith anticipate Jesus Christ, the Redeemer who by His resurrection from the dead is alive.  Does your heart yearn for such a hope?  Or is your hope a dead-end street?