Job 42:7 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters | Metropolitan Tabernacle

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Job 42:7

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God declares that Job has been right in what he has spoken and the friends have been wrong. This is very black and white. The Lord’s judgment of this situation is not to apportion blame on both sides, but to come down decidedly on Job’s side. Job is commended here by the Lord and his theology is approved of, while theirs is condemned. This obviously does not mean that Job has said nothing wrong – the last four chapters, and indeed the six chapters before that have indicated that Job has said some foolish things and spoken ignorantly, and Job himself has just condemned his own words. Nevertheless there is a vast difference between Job and his outlook on the world, and darkness of understanding of the three friends. Job is a believer walking in the light, but reacting badly to his trials. The friends are nominal believers with a works-based theology, whose speeches have revealed that they are strangers to God and to his grace. Peter says, ‘For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?’ (1 Peter 4:17). Job must be corrected first, because God’s chief concern is with the holiness of his people; they are the reason why the world continues, and they must be conformed to the image of Christ. They must have true righteousness not phoney righteousness, and God himself and his scheme of salvation are vindicated by their genuineness. There must be true love for God in their hearts, even if sin continues to be mixed with it until death delivers them from the law of sin and death working in the flesh. In this way Satan was fully answered as Job’s character was proven to be genuine. But judgment does not end there. Those on Christ’s right hand are addressed first at the Great Assize, but then he will turn to the goats on his left. The unrighteous must also be scrutinised and all the hard words they have uttered and the wicked acts they have committed must receive their full reward. God therefore turns to consider the comforters and their liberal theology. Eliphaz is addressed as the leader of the three and the one who has spoken first in each cycle. God is angry with Eliphaz – a very different verdict to that which Eliphaz imagined – for he had convinced himself that he and his three friends were unquestionably in the right in this dispute, and that Job’s position was indefensible. How could he be so mistaken? He had conjured up for himself a different God, a different righteousness, and a different gospel. He was living in a world of make-believe and when God appeared and spoke, the mirage of his world began to disappear leaving him in confusion. This verdict of the Lord did not simply point out some minor problem or some slightly wrong emphasis in the friends’ speeches; it disqualified their whole understanding. This must have been an enormous shock to them for they had thought they were defending the truth with the utmost zeal, yet the God they defended was a product of their imagination. Their arguments that seemed so plausible were out of line, and they had been inadvertently fighting against God. No wonder they received such a severe rebuke. They were religious men but they were self-righteous men and they needed to come to a knowledge of the truth as Job had. Now the curtain was drawn and the light flooded in and the playact which had been conducted in the dark came to an end. They must see themselves as usurpers and must recognize their great need of true repentance and humility before God and his servant.

Application

It is comforting to know what when believers utter some foolish sentiments God does not disown them, but continues to treat them as his own dear children, and knows how to bring them to a better understanding. If we backslide, we should come to the Lord again with this encouragement: that his patience is greater than we can understand, and that if we are wholehearted in our repentance he can make good what we have lost.

Job is going to be a channel of blessing to the friends. Some who we pray for do not respond at first. We may witness to them for years and nothing happens. For now they are counted as enemies of the gospel, but in time our witness may be used by God to bring them to faith. You might think Job had blotted his copybook and could never have an effective witness, but God turned the situation round in a remarkable way.

‘My servant Job’ – I will accept him. God is saying, ‘You must approach me as Job has taught you to do. Sit at his feet.’ Here is the total vindication that every believer can expect from his God. An unbelieving world and a false church hate this more than anything else: to know that God rejects them and approves of his little flock. Here the comforters are put in the painful position of having to come to Job as their intercessor and the gateway to their forgiveness. Truly God vindicated his people and lifts them up from their abasement to the position of highest privilege. He will claim them as his favourites while the world that despised them will be cast down.

Many will be saved through our intercession also. In this way God exalts Job over them, and makes clear his verdict on all they have said. We should not interpret the book in a way that overturns this verdict. We should not make them out to be true believers who had gone a little off track. Vindication must come from the Lord, and when it comes it will be far more convincing, far more devastating to the enemies of God’s people than anything believers could produce. Job is justified by these words, and who can condemn those whom God justifies?

Questions

How could God characterise Job’s words in this way, when Job had spoken so many hasty things, and when the God himself had rebuked him? Only because Job was a regenerate man and had the truth in his heart. He had held onto his faith and never denied the Lord. He had always spoken as one who accepted the holiness of God and who believed in a God whose standard of righteousness could not be adjusted to meet human sinfulness. He had struggled with how such a God could behave towards Job as he had, but he could not abandon hope that an explanation was to be found, whereas the comforters had adjusted their theology from the start to create a God who accommodates himself to human weakness. Their theology faced no particular struggle because it had from the start abandoned the strict constraints of Job’s evangelical theology. They had also come up with an explanation for Job’s situation which sacrificed Job’s genuine spiritual experience and renewed character. Because they were prepared to write off a true child of God, it was not hard for them to find another explanation for all that happened to him, and therefore they side-stepped all the real dilemmas of the case which a true child of God would have to confront.

Outline

Purpose

Introduction

Job 42:7 Commentary and Bible Study