This is Spoken Gospel.
We’re dedicated to seeing Jesus in all of scripture.
In each episode, we see what’s happening in a Biblical text,
and how it sheds light on Jesus and his gospel.
Let’s jump in.
So far, both of Job’s friends assumed Job is not as sinless as he claims.
Zophar, Job’s third friend, goes even further and says Job is not evensuffering as much as he deserves.
He invites Job to imagine what it would look like for God to punish him all of his sins!
But like Job’s other friends, Zophar holds out hope for restoration.
If Job stops his hidden sins, he believes God will give back everything that he lost.
Job’s friends want Job to repent and clean up his act so he can get his good life back. But Job is only interested in maintaining his innocence.
More importantly, Job wants his relationship with God to be restored.
Just listen to Job’s cry: “You will call and I will answer you; you will long for the creature your hands have made”.
Now this doesn’t mean Job is perfect in how he presents that request.
Job presumptuously claims to know God’s motives.
He frequently implies God is overly critical.
Job rightly rejects his friends’ simplistic understanding of God’s rewards and punishment.
But he wrongly accuses God as part of the problem.
Remember, the book of Job wasn’t written primarily to show us an example of someone who suffers well. It was written to
help us think rightly about God, especially when we suffer.
And as the first set of speeches ends, we’re asked to evaluate both Job’s and his friends' views about God and suffering.
Job’s friends believe all suffering is deserved.
But Job knows he’s innocent.
So instead of blaming himself, Job begins to question God’s fairness.
He accuses God of slowly eroding all his hope.
A major difference between Job and his friends is what they hope for.
Zophar, along with the others, hopes that everything Job lost will be returned to him.
But Job hopes for his relationship with God to be renewed.
Job wants to speak to God; and he longs for God to desire to be in a relationship with him.
If that type of relationship can exist again, Job’s confident that his innocence will be upheld, and any sin will be covered and forgotten.
That type of relationship with God is available in Jesus.
We are Jesus’ beloved, and he desires us just like Job hoped.
The Apostle Paul compares Jesus’ desire for us to the love a husband has for his wife.
And out of Jesus’ great love, he dies so that his beloved will be innocent of all faults.
In Jesus, Job’s hopes for relationship are met and exceeded.
Not only does Jesus restore our relationship with God and call us innocent,
we become intimately one with God as his Holy Spirit lives in us.
Just as Job insisted against the accusations of Zophar,
the Holy Spirit insists that our suffering can’t be a punishment for our sin because that punishment has been nailed to the cross.
We are now and will always be innocent because of Jesus.
Despite what our suffering seems to insinuate, God is not tormenting us.
And when our suffering makes that hard to believe, the Holy Spirit will remind us that
our cries are heard by a loving Father and not an unfair judge.
May the Holy Spirit open your eyes to see the God who desires a relationship with us.
And may you see Jesus as the one who fills us with his Holy Spirit
so that we will always know, even when we suffer, that God is still with us.