Today in God’s Word

Today in God's Word—June 2023

East Tallassee Church of Christ

June 11, Job 16

”Even new behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high." - Job 16:19

Are you a big talker? Is there someone around you who talks a lot more than you do, someone you'd like to ask (politely, of course) to please stop talking? Most of us know what it's like to have friends or coworkers who make us want to point the tv remote at them and press MUTE, just to see if it might work.

A couple of chapters back, Job had asked his friends to just stop talking. Their words were making him feel worse, not better. Poor Job said, "Oh, that you would keep silent, and it would be your wisdom!" But Eliphaz started his second speech, and round two of the debate was underway. His second speech was like the first one, only meaner and more accusing. Job pronounced his friends "miserable comforters." He said if their roles were reversed, he would treat them the same way they treated him. But Job said that he would encourage them and comfort them with his words.

The miserable comforters only added to Job's misery. He got no relief from his anguish whether he talked about it or not. His own flesh, gaunt and lean, seemed to join the accusers in pointing a bony finger of blame at him.

Out of that terrible place of darkness and misery, Job said some things that could only be explained by inspiration. Here again, in Chapter 16 as before, Job's words showed that indeed, "light is given to those in misery." Let's meditate on three things Job said that must have been from inspiration.

Job said that God had worn him out and taken away all his company. He still had his wife and these friends, but they were not helping him at all. He said God had shriveled him up, torn him in his wrath and hated him. His vivid description of what God had done to him also included the line, "God gives me up to the ungodly." Job attributed some of the brutal, cruel, callous treatment he had suffered not directly to God,

but the ungodly enemy to whom God had given him. As Job tried to understand the source of his agony, he seemed to understand that God was ultimately responsible, either by direct action or granting another permission to torment him.

We don't know with any certainty when Job lived. Most scholars find clues in his sacrifices for his children and other details to date Job among the early patriarchs. So he would be well after Adam and his family, probably after Noah, but certainly before Abraham. While no one knows for sure, it is interesting that Job somehow knew the story of Cain and Abel, and how innocent Abel's blood cried out to God from the ground. Job called for the earth to "cover not his blood." Was that inspired knowledge?

If Job was from the time before Abraham, he was at least a thousand years before David. But he described his misery in almost exactly the same words that David would use in Psalm 22 to foretell Messiah's suffering on the cross. God must have given both Job and David that gruesome glimpse of the ultimate case of undeserved suffering. Did David know the book of Job? It's very possible and likely that he did.

But most wonderful of all, Job had some degree of foreknowledge about not only Messiah's suffering, but of the Messiah being our Advocate in heaven before the Father. When he said, "My witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high," surely he could only have known that concept from inspired revelation. In Chapter 17, he will say something even more descriptive of Messiah’s work on our behalf.

It's remarkable to me that Job said these things from the deep agony of body and spirit he endured. I don't know for sure about you, but the things I say when I'm emotionally down or in physical pain do not usually have such clarity and meaning. We’re sorry that Job had to listen to his antagonistic friends, The best thing they could have done was to just stop talking. But I am so grateful for Job's words that encourage

us to look to the Lord when we're hurting and dealing with matters we do not understand. I'm thankful for the words that point to a source from above and beyond Job who gave him some of his words and knowledge. Job still maintained that there was no violence in his hands and his prayer was pure. But he kept trusting and waiting on God. Job is a great example for you and me when suffering comes to us and ours in this troubled world.

Copyright © 2023 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.