— The hand over the mouth. Not shame. Not defeat. Awe. There is a difference.
God speaks again. He describes Behemoth a creature of terrifying power, lying among the reeds of the marsh, whose tail sways like a cedar, whose bones are tubes of bronze. And then Leviathan the sea creature that cannot be tamed, who breathes fire, whose heart is hard as stone, who laughs at the rattling spear. Who made these? Who controls them? Who dares stand before them?
The point is not the creatures themselves. The point is the world they represent a world of wild, untamable power that God governs effortlessly, that is completely beyond human control, and that has been running in perfect order since before Job drew his first breath.
The God who holds Leviathan on a leash is the God who holds your future. Nothing in your life is wilder than what He already governs. Nothing is outside His reach.
And then Job speaks. And what he says is so simple and so devastating in its simplicity that it stops the whole book in its tracks:
“My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.”
— Job 42:5
My ears had heard of you. Before all of this before the suffering, before the ash heap, before the friends, before the whirlwind Job had a faith built on what he had been told about God. A solid faith. A genuine faith. But secondhand.
Now my eyes have seen you. The suffering did not destroy his faith. It deepened it beyond anything a comfortable life could have produced. He has seen God not his theology about God, not his friends’ theology about God, not the God of his prosperous former life. God Himself. The One who speaks from whirlwinds. The One whose questions cannot be answered. The One who is so far beyond Job’s comprehension that comprehension has stopped being the goal.
There is a faith that lives in the ear information about God, stories about God, correct doctrine about God. And there is a faith that lives in the eye a personal encounter, a moment when the living God becomes more real than the suffering around you. Job spent forty-two chapters moving from one to the other. The suffering was the corridor.
He repents. Not of the sins his friends accused him of there were none. He repents of speaking about things too wonderful for him. Of pressing his case as though he could grasp the full counsel of God. Of demanding an explanation from the One who owes no explanations. And in that repentance, something is released.
Chapter 42 closes with the ending no one in the middle of the book could have predicted. God turns to Eliphaz and says: I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken the truth about me, as my servant Job has. Job the man who cursed the day of his birth, who accused God of watching him too closely, who demanded a hearing, who said “though He slay me, yet will I hope” spoke rightly. The friends who offered careful, orthodox, conventional explanations of suffering? They got it wrong.
God would rather have your honest wrestling than your polished religion. He would rather have the man in the ash heap crying out than the man in the comfortable chair explaining why the man in the ash heap deserves to be there.
And then the restoration. Job prays for his friends the very men who tormented him for chapters and God restores his fortunes. Twice what he had before. New children. New flocks. New life. His brothers and sisters and former acquaintances come and eat bread with him in his house. They give him money and a gold ring. He lives another hundred and forty years. He sees his children and grandchildren to the fourth generation.
He dies old and full of days.
— The story that looked like it was ending in ashes ended in abundance. It always does, when God is writing it.
Your suffering is not the last chapter. God is a God of restoration. What was taken will be returned. What was broken will be healed. What was mourned will become the source of your greatest testimony. Hold on.
