Job 23 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study
Job 23 Short Summary:
In Job 23, Job expresses his wish that God was more accessible. He wanted to walk up to him and have a conversation about his situation. He knew God would answer him and be fair with him. At the end of the day, Job trusted God and made it clear that even if God didn’t give him an answer, he was going to trust God and believe that He would make something good come from his tough circumstances.
Job 23 Bible Study
SHORT OUTLINE OF THE BOOK OF JOB
Job 1-2 – Job is Persecuted by Satan
Job 3-37 – Job and His Friends Discuss the Reason He is Experiencing Persecution
Job 38-41 – God Speaks with Job and Reveals His Greatness to Him.
Job 42 – God Restores What Job Lost
WHEN:
The date of the writing of Job is unknown and still debated. Some believe it was written during the time of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) or even earlier, while others suspect it was written during the time of Judah’s Babylonian captivity (607-537 B.C.).
I take the earlier date. The description of Job as the “greatest of all the people of the east” (1:3) and an absence of references to Israel, Jerusalem, and the Temple suggests to me that this book was written early.
KEY CHARACTERS:
Job – A blameless and upright man who Satan persecuted in an attempt to turn his heart away from God.
Job’s Friends – Three men who were determined to accuse Job of sin. They were convinced Job’s suffering was God’s judgement on him for his hidden sin.
WHERE:
Job lived in the land of Uz. Most scholars surmise the land of Uz was in northern Saudi Arabia, either immediately south of the Dead Sea, I the land that would become known as Edom, or immediately east of the Dead Sea, which is today the country of Jordan.
OUTLINE:
“WHERE CAN I FIND GOD?” (23:1-17):
Job longed to “find God” in the sense that he wanted to be able to walk up to God and have a conversation with Him about his situation.
He knew God was real, but He was in heaven, and not immediately accessible in the way a man can walk up to another man and have a conversation.
God wasn’t like a human judge who sat is a physical courtroom and held office hours. But Job longed for that kind of accessibility because he wanted to speak with God and present his case before Him.
Job felt like God wasn’t listening to his prayers, so He needed to converse with Him face-to-face.
He wasn’t afraid of God’s answer; he knew God would be fair with him.
He said, “There an upright man could argue with Him, and I would be acquitted forever by my Judge” (23:7).
While Job couldn’t “find God,” he was confident that God knew exactly where he was, and that God had a purpose in allowing him to suffer.
“But He knows the way that I take; when He has tried me, I shall come out as gold… For He will complete what He appoints for me, and many such things are in His mind” (23:10, 14).
Job believed that something good was going to come out of his circumstances.
He resolved himself to hold fast to God’s ways and remain unmovable in his confidence that God was going to vindicate him.
APPLICATION
In the concluding verses of this chapter, after expressing his confidence that God is on his side, Job talks about how God made his heart faint and terrified him.
In this, we see an important harmony in God’s nature that’s important for us to recognize.
God is an ally and a comforter, but it’s a mistake to see Him as only those things.
Some people present God as a big teddy bear who just wants to bless people and be friends with everybody and who doesn’t pose a threat to anyone.
Is God our father? Does He love us? Yes! But He is also an incomprehensible being beyond our wildest imagination.
We don’t understand the way He works or why He does what He does.
We don’t know the tenth of His immeasurable power.
He has revealed Himself to us, yet there is still so much we don’t know.
Humility is the key. Though you may be the recipient of His grace and blessings, that does not mean that you comprehend Him fully.
He is our friend and father… True!
He is an infinite force beyond our understanding… True!
Job was right to recognize the harmony of these two truths when talking about God. When we present God to people in our churches and talk about him in our personal lives, we need to talk about Him with this harmony in mind. We love Him more than anything else, but we also fear Him more than anything else.
