This Sunday we will have a message summarising Job's speeches. In preparation for working through what Job has to say, it is necessary for us to consider what and why we as the readers of the book know more than Job and his friends. 

We have had Christopher Ash's excellent commentary as our regular guide as we have been working through the book. I include his extended insight here as it is so very helpful for us. I encourage you to read it carefully and prayerfully:

One of the most significant features of the book of Job is that from beginning to end we, the readers, know something that Job, the main human character, does not know. Twice in chapters 1, 2 we are given a divine prophetic insight into what has happened in Heaven. We know what God has said to the Satan, what the Satan has said to God, and what God has decreed for Job. We know that Job’s sufferings are not because he is an impenitent sinner but precisely because he is a real and faithful man of God. We know that Job is not the story of everyman but the story of the faithful and obedient believer. We know that the sufferings of Job are in some strange and deep way necessary for the glory of God and the well-being of the universe. But Job knows none of these things.

So the question is, why are we told what we are told, and what are we to learn from the drama? For what purpose are we, the readers, privileged as Job was not? Presumably the book is not just told for us to enjoy as spectators, watching from the comfort of our armchairs. I think there are at least two answers to these questions. First, we gain from the sufferings of Job a deep insight into the sufferings of Jesus Christ. The Gospels are quite sparing in what they tell us of the inner workings of Jesus’ heart and soul. We know that his soul was sometimes troubled (e.g., John 12:27), that he shrank from the darkness of the cross in horror (e.g., Luke 22:39–46), and that he felt the pain of living in a godless world (Matthew 17:17). We know from the Psalms of lament (perhaps especially Psalms 22 and 69) something of the horror of the wrath of God. But the speeches of Job give us a unique insight into what it feels like for a believer to experience God-forsakenness. And therefore they help us to understand and feel the darkness of the cross.

But I think there is a second reason. We are naturally prone to keep slipping into not knowing what we know. We know, because God has told us, that there is such a thing as undeserved and redemptive suffering, and that as believers walk in the footsteps of Jesus and the shadow of the cross we too are called upon to suffer. We know that as forgiven sinners none of our sufferings are God’s punishment for our sins, for that has already been paid. We know that some of our sufferings are God’s loving fatherly discipline for those he loves. But we also know that some of our sufferings are the filling out of what was lacking in the sufferings of Jesus (see Colossians 1:24), undeserved and with no disciplinary purpose. We know these things because God has told us.

But because our hearts shrink from this darkness, we naturally forget that we know these things and behave as if we do not know them. We slip into a practical not knowing of what we know. The System of the comforters is the default assumption of all of us if we are morally serious. We naturally expect blessing for godliness and grief for sin. An immersion in the speeches of Job will help us really and deeply to know what we know, to remember that our default system is not true, and so to prepare us for the realities of discipleship.