- There are some glimmers of hope in this chapter. We get the famous verse, “I know my Redeemer lives” from this chapter.
- Before we get to that we have Job feeling like he’s not receiving justice. He says, “I call for help, but there is no justice.”
- It reminded me of Isaiah 40:27: Why do you say, O Jacob, And speak, O Israel: “My way is hidden from the LORD, And my just claim is passed over by my God”? The next verse then reminds that God’s ways are unsearchable. While we can know His good and perfect and awesome attributes, there are things we just don’t understand. We just don’t see all He sees.
- We do see in this chapter a glimpse of what God is up to. Job can’t see it in the middle of things, but we can see it with hindsight and our knowledge of Christ and our goal of becoming empty of ourselves and full of God.
- Job says, “He has stripped from me my glory,” and “He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone.”
- Those are good things. We’re not to share the glory with God. It’s His. Our goal is to be gone, to disappear, to no longer live but so identify with Christ’s life in us that it is Jesus that lives our life in the flesh through us.
- Job pleads with his friends to have mercy. It is just one more wound that Job has to bear that his closest friends seem to have turned on him. It’s something many Christians will go through as we join in Christ’s sufferings. Even if they thought he deserved what he was getting, they could have chosen mercy. That’s what God does. He shows mercy and doesn’t give us what we deserve.
- Job doesn’t see the end that we can see. He proclaims, “Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book!” They will be. He doesn’t know it. He’s lamenting, but he could be rejoicing in faith.
- Then he speaks with hope, knowing his living Redeemer will take His stand on the earth and that he will see God, even while still in the flesh. His living redeemer will reveal himself to Job and will redeem all things. There is always hope.
