100618: The Suffering Servant

Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence
​and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. If you know that He is
righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.
1 John 2:28-29 (NASB)

Hymn: "We Worship and Adore Thee"

Job is a type of Christ, in that we see in him a picture of some aspect of who Jesus would be and how He would fulfill the promises of God. This is nowhere more apparent than in chapter 42.

​Job has gone through a great trial. A massive affliction that he did not deserve was laid on his head, costing him all of his wealth and family (except his wife, who turned against him) and drawing others to point to it as evidence of evil in his heart. He bore the marks of condemnation on his very body. He was raised up for them as a symbolic curse, a lesson for those who oppose God, though he never had and those who made the accusation did so based on a misunderstanding of who God is. Job is the essence of the suffering servant, the righteous one who endures great trial. But the imagery that ties Job to Christ does not end at his suffering. In chapter 42, we get some more very important details. 

It came about after the LORD had spoken these words to Job, that the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me what is right as My servant Job has. "Now therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, and go to My servant Job, and offer up a burnt offering for yourselves, and My servant Job will pray for you. For I will accept him so that I may not do with you [according to your] folly, because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has." So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite [and] Zophar the Naamathite went and did as the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job.
Job 42:7-9 (NASB)

There are a few things here worth noting. One, Eliphaz is probably a descendant of Abraham. Genesis 36:10-11 tells us that Esau had a son named Eliphaz to his wife Adah, and Eliphaz had a son named Teman. If he is not to be read as an archetype, then, Eliphaz the Temanite is likely from the clan of Teman and bearing a family name. Bildad the Shuhite may also be descended from Abraham, a member of the clan of Shuah, a son of Abraham by his second wife, Keturah, from Genesis 25. What we have in Job 42, then, is a descendant of Abraham who lives outside the promise made to Abraham receiving direct word from God that the only way he and his companions (another descendant of Abraham outside the promise, and a man likely unrelated to Abraham at all) can be made right before God is to go to the man they had scorned as cursed by God and welcome the sacrifice that he would make on their behalf. Through this, God did not directly promise to accept them, but did accept Job because of his sacrifice and, near as we can tell, accept the others on Job's behalf.

The LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the LORD increased all that Job had twofold.
Job 42:10 (NASB)

Why did Job have so much blessing at the end of his life? The end of the book records a massive amount of wealth and a broad family coming to Job, and I have heard it preached as though God was repaying Job for all that had been taken away from him. But the verse above seems to indicate another angle: God did not reward Job as a direct result of his suffering, but as a result of his sacrifice and prayer offered on behalf of the people who had condemned him.

Let's tie this all together. Job points forward to Christ not only as the suffering servant, but as the only way to find restoration to God for both the blood of Abraham and the gentile, especially because both parties have rejected and condemned him due to a misunderstanding of who God is. As a result of interceding and making sacrifice on their behalf, God not only accepts them but glorifies him. All of this is true of Christ.

We, by being born of the spirit and turning to the Christ that the world has rejected, are welcomed by God while Christ, who was perfect but suffered and offered his own life as sacrifice on our behalf, is glorified for His work to save us. The whole gospel is imaged in the Old Testament, if only we will allow ourselves to see it.