8 Ways that Christ Walks in the Book of Job
Al Mohler in He is Not Silent writes:
“Every single text of Scripture points to Christ…From Moses to the prophets, He is the focus of every single word of the Bible. Every verse of Scripture finds its fulfillment in Him, and every story of the Bible ends with Him.”
The same is true for the book of Job. Here are eight ways that Christ walks in the book of Job:
1. A Blameless Man
In the book of Job, the most upright man on earth (Job 1:8) suffers the most of anyone on earth. 1 Peter 2 says of Jesus “He committed no sin” but “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:22, 24).
2. Passionate Lament
Job bemoaned, “Why do You hide Your face, and regard me as Your enemy?” (13:24). The lament of Jesus on the cross was: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Mt 27:46) Both engaged in passionate laments in in the hour of their suffering.
3. Forsaken by Friends
In the hour when Job needed his friends most, they failed him: “Miserable comforters are you all” (Job 16:1). At Jesus’ arrest, all his disciples abandoned him: “Then everyone deserted him and fled.” (Mark 14:50).
4. Disfigured by Suffering
Job was so disfigured by his sufferings that his friends didn’t recognize him (Job 2:12: “When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him”). Isaiah says that the Messiah’s “appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance” (Isaiah 52:14).
5. Source of Trial
The source of Job’s suffering was that he was attacked by people, by Satan, and by God. When you look at the cross, you realize that Jesus was crucified by people (the Roman soldiers, the Jewish leaders), by Satan (who entered Judas Iscariot), and by God (who gave His Son for us all).
6. Innocent Sufferer
God to Satan about Job: “You incited Me against him, to destroy him without cause” (Job 2:30). Job did nothing wrong to deserve his suffering. Nor did Christ. Jesus was a sacrificial lamb “without blemish or defect” (1 Peter 1:19)
7. Intercession & Suffering
Job was asked to intercede for his friends. Job 42:8: “My servant Job shall pray for you, for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly.” Jesus is our great high priest who “always lives to make intercession” (Heb 7:25).
8. Granted A Vision of Seeing God
Job says: “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You” (Job 42:5). Jesus says only the Son “has seen the Father” (John 6:46).
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the doyen of nineteenth-century British preachers, once indicated his own hermeneutical method:
“I have never yet found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it, and if I ever do find one that has not a road to Christ in it, I will make one; I will go over hedge and ditch but I would get at my Master, for the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savor of Christ in it.”
Christ treads beautifully in the pages of the book of Job.