Job. No other name is so effective to summon from the mists of history a man whose quietness and confidence were rudely interrupted and rapidly exchanged for questioning. We may with reverence place the two names, Job and Jesus, side by side as the supreme examples of faith, hope and love, assaulted by all the forces of hell, but emerging vindicated and victorious. Both sufferers asked questions to which, although no verbal answers were given from heaven, such divine action was taken as to provide concrete answers to all the doubts of all the ages.
The Book of Job can be simply described in the form of a graph. The curve starts at the high point of human felicity with the righteous man enjoying all the rich bounty of the grace of God. But it does not continue long in those high attitudes. Before the first chapter is ended a swift downward movement has commenced and at the end of the second, the line is far on its way to zero. It remains in the depths until the end of the story when it inclines steeply, to reach a height far exceeding that of the starting point, making a graphic record of experience in the valley of the shadow, walled by the hills of God.
Surveying all the arguments and protests, one thing is clear: Job’s three friends were unequal to the emergency of his destitution. Their flood of eloquence was a mixture of truth and error with the truth too often misapplied. They were trying to measure the depths of omniscience with a short sounding line of their own contrivance, with ridiculous results.
Young Elihu was much nearer reality. He rightly charged Job with justifying himself rather than God. His aim was to justify Job by justifying God. However mysterious the ways of the Almighty, they were wise and good. What appeared to be a hopelessly tangled web would soon be completed and revealed as perfect cloth of gold.
Then spoke the voice of Eternal Excellency and as in the beginning of time, chaos was changed to ordered beauty in which was set the throne of sovereign wisdom. It had been there all the time, like a patient sentinel.
Whatever Job’s failures due to a multitude of words, his heart was right. Although in the overwhelming floods of sorrow, he had uttered things which he did not understand, and for which he had to repent in dust and ashes, his faith had not failed. From the living death of his disease he had caught glimpses of the resurrection glory awaiting him. His answer to the vain arguments of his friends and to the challenge of his own heart, remains the language of uttermost trust: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”
Only his bare life had been left him and that he was prepared to yield on demand. He could not but ask, “Why?” But the unbroken silence should not hinder his surrender.
What was veil to Job’s eyes is vision to ours. He was the subject of a tremendous experiment. Hell had challenged heaven. The divine honor was in question. A man of God was accused by high authority of being a self server. “Put forth Thine hand now and touch his bone and his flesh and he will curse Thee to Thy face.” So human stuff was poured into the crucible while the furnace blazed. Demons worked; fools babbled; a man cried out in anguish; God waited to be gracious and lo, it was proven true, “Purge away the dross from the silver and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer.”
Since to the men of old time it was given to blaze the trail which became the road to Calvary, to us it is permitted to follow in their steps. Not blindly, but feeling after the individual tragedy, aware of pain on a world scale, observing the ruin of broken faith, perished hope, and love grown cold. But learning by all to cease from failing man and trust alone in the faultless Man Jesus Christ.