Big Idea - As we come to the end of the Book of Job, we come to understand that the book is not about helping find comfort in the midst of suffering. In fact, the book offers no help or comfort for those who are suffering. Instead, the book is really about helping us understand and evaluate our motives in doing what is good and right. Are we trying to be a good person? If so, what is our motive in being a good person and doing good deeds? But even more significantly, the book examines why God does good. Why does God bless people with good things? Why does He take care of creation? Why does He take care of us? These are both extremely important questions because our answers to these questions frame the nature of our relationship with God. That is, it defines the kind of relationship God seeks with human beings. Is the God of the Bible a god like the ancient gods who didn't really know what they wanted but were dependent on people to give them what they wanted once they figured it out? If people did the bidding of the gods, the gods would return the favor. This merit-based system of karma, or getting what you deserve, has survived to this very day and is evident in some form or another in most religions. But is Yahweh like that? Does that characterize the kind of relationship He wants to have with us? Of course, the answer is no. That is not at all what He is like. So how does the Book of Job paint a different picture? How does God want to relate to us? Does that define the kind of relationship we have with Him?
The first question the book deals with is why we do the right thing. Job illustrates that we should not do the right thing as a means to an end. That is, to manipulate God into giving us what we want. Job had the right understanding that righteousness was an objective standard you could know, and it was important and right to do good for its own sake. Our motive for doing good is that it is the right thing to do. But is that our motivation? Or are we more like Job's friends who are trying to manipulate God, earn His favor, or the favor and respect of others? It is sometimes hard to evaluate our own motives, but sometimes our motives get tested when we suffer. If we get angry at God because we are not getting what we deserve, it indicates that we are doing good for the wrong reasons.
The more important question is, why does God do good? Why does He bless us at all? In His final speech to Job, God reveals that His motive is to care for His creation, not to give everyone what they deserve. God cannot be controlled or manipulated. He also does not do good to manipulate us nor as a response to being manipulated by us! God is just, but His relationship with creation and with us is not based on giving everyone exactly what they deserve moment by moment. Instead, He cares for all that He has made by providing, protecting, and sustaining the world and all that is in it. God's protection and care are needed in a world that is not perfectly ordered. In a world where the disorder of progressive creation and of sin, this protection and care is not always guaranteed. Instead, it is a general principle of how God works. When bad things happen, it results from living in a world where disorder exists. Where good things happen, it is a sign of God's loving care in the midst of the disorder and chaos. His care is a matter of His goodness, not a matter of getting what we deserve (that is reserved for the Day of Judgement). In the end, Job's fortune is restored. This is not supposed to erase all his suffering somehow, but to show that God will not change how He works in the world. He is a God who loves to bless people! But, we now understand that it comes from a God who cares about Job and seeks to show Him favor far beyond the cold and impersonal response of giving him exactly what he deserves. God wants us to know Him - as He really is. In the end, Job's eyes are opened, and He comes to really know what God is like!
Finally, we see that God's goodness extends even further in that He often gives people what they don't deserve. That is, He extends grace to those who deserve punishment. God is angry with Job's friends and finds them guilty of speaking falsely about God. But, instead of punishing them, He makes a way for them to be forgiven. This grace, ironically, comes through the priestly mediation of Job. Job, who is suffering as if he were being punished, prays for those who deserve punishment but escape it because of the sacrifice given in their place and the prayers of a mediator who is suffering the punishment they deserve. What an amazing picture of Jesus and the cross! God wants us to know Him and relate to Him based on grace, not works. Because of what He has done for us, even in suffering, not because of what we have done for Him!
