Started in on Job a couple of days ago. This morning, I’m hovering over chapter 3.
I know what’s coming over the next several chapters. Some pretty cringe-worthy debate between Job and his friends. But he asked for it.
Upon realizing the depths of his loss and seeing the physical effects of his affliction, when his friends arrived they were speechless. They mourned for him and they cried for him but, at least at first, they didn’t have anything to say to him, “for they saw that his suffering was very great” (2:13). Job might have done well to leave well enough alone.
But Job broke the awkward silence. Though he did not charge God with wrong over his great loss (1:22); though in all his physical pain he rebuked the counsel of his wife to “curse God and die” (2:9) and “did not sin with his lips” (2:10b); yet he did let loose his tongue to curse the day of his birth (3:1). And in his outpouring of confusion and cursing, six times he utters a “Why?” question.
Verse 11, why did I not die at birth? Verse 12, why did knees receive me and why were there breasts to feed me? Verse 16, why was I not stillborn?
And then, from the personal, his “Why?” shifts to the philosophical?
“Why is light given to him who is in misery,
and life to the bitter in soul . . .
Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,
whom God has hedged in? . . .
I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;
I have no rest, but trouble comes.”
(Job 3:20, 23, 26 ESV)
But trouble comes . . .
Yes it will, Job. Trouble in the form of three friends who are ready to answer your “Why?” questions. Like I said, he asked for it?
Not judging Job. Just saying that he opened the door for the debate. And Job gets baited by the debate into saying and demanding things he really shouldn’t say or demand. Nor do I want to in any way make light of his suffering and searching. I’ve known a bit sorrow and suffering myself — nothing that compares with Job’s — but enough to get why someone would ask the “Why?” question.
Beyond trouble, however, the other thing that will be coming, or not coming, is that Job never gets an answer to the “Why?” Instead, he will receive a glorious, majestic glimpse of the Who who is over every “Why?” And when he is graciously allowed to see the glory, the “Why?” will be resolved through repentance and result in rest.
As was pointed out to me in some other reading I did this morning, there is a another “Why?” through which God has revealed His glory and goodness toward us.
And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken Me?” . . . And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed His last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing Him, saw that in this way He breathed His last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
(Mark 15:34, 37-39 ESV)
Hanging on a Roman cross, Jesus asked the “Why?” question too. Like Job, asked from a place of intense suffering. Unlike Job, asked from a place of perfect submission. Not cursing the day of His birth but knowing that it was for “this purpose” He was born (John 18:37). His faultless, immaculate “Why?” uttered so that we might be fully and forever redeemed from sin and sorrow and suffering as, on that cross, He paid the price in full for the debt of sin we owed which we could never pay. His “Why?” revealing His glory — that truly this man was the Son of God.
Every “Why?” is in the hands of the One who “is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25).
Hallelujah, what a Savior!
By His grace. For His glory.
