Key Truth: Our relationship with God should humble us and call us to serve as an ambassador of reconciliation who displays His glory in all that He gives us.

Q: What is the center of your universe as shown by what you invest in and think about most?

“The speeches of God have brought home the fact that human beings are not the center of the universe and that not everything has been made for their service. Acknowledgment of his littleness may thus be an important step toward the abandonment of his anthropocentrism.”

Gustavo Gutierrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent

Job’s Repentance: Of Hearing of the Ear and Eyes That Now See

Job 42:1-6:

“Job is not here expressing a general repentance for all his depravity. That would defeat the whole purpose of the book, because that is what Job’s friends have been trying to get him to do. Instead, he is doing what he was unwilling to do in Job 40:3-5. He abandons his self-justification project. He retracts his demand that God, because of Job’s righteousness, must give him explanation and public vindication. He gives up trying to control God (that is to say, he stops mistrusting God) in any way. He bows before God and lets him be who he is. He serves God for himself alone.”

Timothy Keller, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering

Q: How has your experience of and relationship with God humbled you?

Job’s Friends Forgiven: Of Not Speaking Rightly and Prayer for Folly:

Job 42:7-9:

“…by appointing Job as intercessor for his misguided friends, and doing so while he was still unsightly and unhealed, God put it beyond all doubt that this man’s sufferings were no disgrace, no punishment.”

Derek Kidner, The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes

Q: How has your reconciliation with God resulted in you serving as an ambassador of His reconciliation? What are some ways in which you are intentionally pursuing this calling?

Job’s Restoration: Of Double Fortunes and the Fullness of Days:

Job 42:10-17:

“These gifts at the end are gestures of grace, not rewards for virtue. It is an artistic, indeed theological fitness, if not necessity, that Job’s vindication be not just a personal and hidden reconciliation with God in the secret of his soul, but also visible, material, historical, in terms of his life as a man. It was already a kind of resurrection in flesh, as much as the Old Testament could know.”

Frances I. Andersen, Job: Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries

Q: What are some ways in which God has tangibly evidenced your redemption in your life?

Application:

Job 42 teaches us that:

-God is best known personally and relationally instead of vicariously or by hearsay

-our reconciliation calls us to serve as ambassadors of reconciliation to others

-God sometimes graciously displays His glory tangibly in our reconciliation

“Christianity is an invitation to trust God’s love at all times. Instead of answering our questions, it introduces us to the God in whom the answer to all our questions lies. It tells us to trust him before we get the answers. These answers will, in the main, be given in heaven, where faith becomes sight and we shall know as we are known. We look forward to that day.”

Derek Thomas, The Storm Breaks: Job Simply Explained

Communion

Benediction:

Romans 8:35-39