In a tragic pandemic like the one we're experiencing right now, the Book of Job becomes especially relevant to each of our lives. But that book poses a significant dilemma any Bible reader has to resolve. It's this dilemma. Which characters in the Book of Job can we trust? Most of the book's characters say things we cannot trust.

And the question today comes from a listener named Joel to Pastor John, who joins us over Skype today. Thank you for your wonderful podcast, Pastor John. I'm a long-time listener and now a first-time caller, as they say. In the wake of this coronavirus pandemic, I have turned repeatedly to the Book of Job.

As you've said in past sermons, the book is timeless and therefore relevant to our present suffering. I've read through Job before, and I understand the cycle of conversations between Job and his friends. But I was reading through Job 5, Eliphaz is speaking, and I came to verses 17 to 19.

I began to ask myself, "When Job and his friends speak of God in their ranting, how do I distinguish theology that's true about God from their own mistaken assumptions about God?" The obvious answer is to survey the landscape of Scripture to find consistencies with other texts. But can we put any stock in what Job or his friends are saying in the Book of Job?

Pastor John, how would you answer? Like the Book of Ecclesiastes, and like some of the parables of Jesus, and like the stories in the Book of Judges that describe—I just finished reading Judges this very morning as we're recording. Oh my goodness, what a terrible book—describing what happens when there's no king, describing sins.

And Job also, like those three, Job also narrates ways of thinking and speaking and acting which are sinful. The speeches of Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Job's involvement with them for 29 chapters are mingled with bad theology and good theology, and the good theology is regularly misused. In fact, I think that's one of the main points of the Book of Job, to show how good theology can become bad pastoral practice.

Really, I don't think you'd spend 29 chapters on the misuse of good theology if that weren't part of the point. There's nothing unusual in all of this in principle, in the way you'd write something. We all tell conversations that we've had, and we tell about events we've been a part of, and some of the things we narrate in the conversations we disapprove of, and some of the things we tell about in our experiences we disapprove of, and we expect listeners, as they listen to us, to distinguish what we're narrating as disapproved and what we're narrating as approved.

We need to give them clues; we have to help them understand which is which. So what makes Job unusual is not that the book includes ways of thinking and speaking which are sinful, but that the dialogue containing these errors is so lengthy, from chapter 3 through chapter 31, where Job and Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar interact for 29 chapters.

That's unusual. So Joel's question is, is there value in these speeches? That's one of his questions. And how do we sort out in this book what to approve and what to disapprove of? How can we embrace his life lessons that God intends, and what should we chew up and spit out?

And I think that there are five ways that God intends, as the one who inspired this book, five ways that he intends to help us be able to profit from and rightly handle and interpret the book of Job. So here they are. Number one, the inspired author. So not everything Job says is true, and not everything Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar says is true, but what the author says as the inspired writer, as his own view, that's true.

And he intrudes himself at key points in this story to make us aware of what he's trying to say through recording all the bad stuff that are not his views. For example, all of chapters one and two, for example, are the express viewpoints of the inspired writer. Here's where we can lay it down with great confidence how we are to view God's sovereignty, the role of Satan, the proper response of man to suffering and to sovereignty.

They're all laid out for us in the first two chapters. And perhaps the most remarkable example of this is the writer's comment about Job's response at the end of each of Job's two tests from the devil. So he says, Job says in chapter one, verse 21, at the loss of his children, all 10 of his children killed, he says, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.

Blessed be the name of the Lord." And you might take a deep breath there and say, "Are you sure? Is that good theology? Should we embrace that? The Lord has taken away, and he's blessed?" And the inspired writer inserts precisely to help us grasp this, he inserts that Job did not misspeak.

Here's what he says. "In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrong." Exactly the same thing in the next chapter. When you come to the end of the second test and Job is, God boils from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet, and his wife says to him, "You should curse God and die." Job says, "Shall we receive good from God and not receive evil?" And you might stop there and say, "Job, don't talk like that.

That's bad theology." And so the inspired writer adds, "In all this, Job did not sin with his lips." In other words, when Job affirms that good and evil, health and disease come from the hand of God, he's not sinning. He's speaking the way we ought to speak. Here's another example of how the inspired writer inserts his divine perspective, inspired perspective on Job's suffering.

In chapter 42, verse 11, looking back over the entire event and experience, he says this. This is Job 42, 11. I think it's one of the most important verses in the book. Then came to Job all his brothers and sisters, and they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him.

That's not Eliphaz talking. That's not Bildad talking. That's not Zophar talking. It's not Job talking. That's the inspired writer putting into words what had happened really in this book. So my first answer to the question, how does God help us discern how to read this book? The answer is he causes the voice of the inspired writer to be clear as he intrudes himself on his own narrative repeatedly.

Here's the second thing. God intends for us to be guided in reading this book by the appearance of Elihu in chapter 32. And Elihu comes, and I believe Elihu is a speaker of truth. I don't think Elihu is an added idiot to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. I think he speaks straight and is truth.

Not everybody agrees with me here. You need to know that. A lot of people think Elihu is just another problem. I don't think that's true. Let me give you five quick reasons why I think Elihu should be listened to as a correct perspective on what has just been going on between Job and Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar.

Number one, he arrives on the scene, chapter 32, with a different perspective over against Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Job. Number two, the writer devotes six chapters to Elihu. Good night. That's a lot of space. And here's the catch. The misguided speeches of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar had been getting shorter and shorter and shorter until the end.

They had nothing more to say. It wouldn't make any sense in the narrator's strategy if he said, "Now I'm going to give you another jerk like Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and I'm going to give him six chapters, and I'm not going to say a word of criticism of him.

No way. I can't buy it." Number three, Job repents from the very things that Elihu criticizes later on in chapter 40 and 42. Number four, God—and I think this is the one that tipped me off years ago when I studied this in more detail—God rebukes explicitly in chapter 42, verse 7.

He rebukes Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. He never says a negative word about Elihu. That's just got to mean something right. Number five, Elihu really does give a different perspective on suffering than Job did. I just commend to you chapter 33, verses 14 to 19. If you want to go into detail, I preached a sermon on this very thing.

It's called "Job Rebuked in Suffering," which you can find at Desire and God. I think Elihu, chapters 32 to 37, are given by the inspired writer to help set right some of the mistakes that were being made by Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Job as they were talking in those 29 chapters.

Here's my third reason that I think God gives to us to help us. God himself speaks in chapters 38 to 41 and gives us a true perspective on his sovereignty and on Job's repentance. Number four, the book closes with Job's repentance and God stepping in, and we get a glimpse of what the errors were that Job repented of.

And then finally, and this is the one that Joel himself mentioned, the wider teaching of Scripture in the Bible functioned, rightly understood, as a kind of sieve to put the words of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and Job through. All that to say, I think God has not left us without an ample help and guidance as to how to sort out what is true and what is not in this book, and not only how to sort out what is true, but also how to use it rather than to misuse it.

It is indeed the book we need right now in this season of suffering in the world to get our bearings and not to make some of the mistakes that Job made in reaction to God's sovereignty in his life. Yes, indeed. Very timely and urgently so. Thank you, Pastor John, for helping us better understand the book of Job.

And speaking of the pandemic, even with all the disruptions to life in this crazy year, ministry for us has been full throttle. In fact, it feels like the Lord has even given us more work to do this year in addressing the pandemic, particularly with the international launch of Pastor John's new book, Coronavirus in Christ.

We're investing tens of thousands of dollars to get that timely book translated and distributed around the world, making it freely available in 29 different languages, and possibly even more to come in the near future. And all of this at a time when so many organizations are forced to cut staff and slash budgets.

Instead, we are actually spending more money than ever to freely give away the best news in the world. And all of our ministry, the website, the books from Pastor John, and of course, this podcast, all of it is possible because God continues to raise up generous ministry partners around us, people who regularly pray for us and who donate to support all of our work.

If that's you, thank you for your partnership. We can't do it without you. And if this is not you, maybe you've been a listener to the podcast or a reader of the website for a while or downloaded free books by Pastor John or watched the YouTube videos we have online.

Maybe you've been blessed by all of this content that our partners have made free of charge to you in the past. And now maybe you want to become someone who will now make those resources available to a new generation who will experience all of Pastor John and Desiring God's content free of charge.

If that's you, now is a great time to join us as our fiscal year ends in June and our new fiscal year begins in July, and we begin to dream about all the new resources we want to make in the year ahead and new audiences we want to reach in the year ahead.

Join us today by going online to DesiringGod.org/donate. That's DesiringGod.org/donate. Thank you for supporting us. I'm Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Monday. Have a great weekend. 1 Desiring God's Content Free of Charge Desiring God's Content Free of Charge Desiring God's Content Free of Charge Desiring God's Content Free of Charge Desiring God's Content Free of Charge Desiring God's Content Free of Charge Desiring God's Content Free of Charge Desiring God's Content Free of Charge