Introduction:

This week 30 members of our Church will visit the Amish town of Lancaster, PA. This town has been well known for many years for it Amish foods, crafts and lifestyle. However, the Lancaster Town of PA made national new back on October 2, 2006 when Charles Roberts a man who delivered milk to the community went to the nearby West Nickle Mines Amish School and shot ten little Amish girls and then him-self. Five of the ten girls died. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. This event plunged that small Amish communities into a sea of grieve and pain.
Roberts wrote a suicide note to his wife stating Elise’s (his baby girl) who died 20 minutes after her birth “changed his life forever,” “I haven’t been the same since, it affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself hate towards God.

The families of the Amish victim’s responded with forgiveness. Leaders of the Amish ask their people to forgive the killer and not to look at him with evil in their hearts. Seventy – five Amish in all, elders, leaders and the families of the slain young girls attended Charles’ funeral. The Amish community worked together to raise funds on behalf of the killer’s children. The Amish demonstrated the difficult work of forgiving those who trespass against us. For them to be given to communal grieve and to do their spiritual work of forgiving stands as a testimony of a people who truly live what they believe. They did the only thing possible to release their community from the captivity of hate, bitterness and anger. God called Job to do this very thing to be restored and made completely whole again. We begin with point number one…

I. Jobs’ Contrition vv.1-6

1. In verse one to three we read that Job confesses his presupposition about God and his lack of knowledge. The questioning by God concerning His creation of Behemoth and Leviathan in Job 40 and 41cause Job to realize his inadequate nature compare to God. He recognized that a God who could do anything can also accomplish every purpose in Job’s life. So, Job has been humbled and confessed in verse three that he had spoken without knowledge. There were many astonishing and awesome things about God that Job did not yet understand.

In the end Job saw that the basis of his problem was his lack of understanding and having excessive confidence in his own righteousness. Then his view of God’s fairness changed. He saw that His critical attitude toward God was wrong.

2. Job is overwhelmed and as a result he confesses to God. He repents and makes contrition before God. He remarks in verse 4 that he was listening at his best. He paid attention to what God said and what God asked. Job flunked God’s biological examinations, but he learned a lesson of God’s sovereign purpose for man. Now in verse five Job says, I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Job did not physically see God, but he had such a revelation of God’s greatness, power, and sovereignty that He “saw” God in a new way.

3. Because of his new vision and understanding of God’s awesome greatness Job in 42:6 says, ‘I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes. Note the verb in verse 6 translated abhor means to despise myself it could be rendered I reject what I said. The Hebrew word literally means, to retract, to repudiate. As a matter of fact, Job at this point went beyond what he had previously said when he declared, ‘I am of small account,’ and declared that he practically cancelled himself entirely. I disappear, I retract all that has been said; I repudiate the position I have taken up.” Job had doubted the goodness of God and His righteous judgment in the world; at times he doubted if there was any good in this life or in the life beyond. Now Job has come full circle, back to a state of humble contentment. He has completely humbled himself before God noting his short slightness. Therefore, God acts on behalf of…

II. Jobs’ Vindication vv. 7-9

1. After Job’s confession, God admonishments his comforters. God address Eliphaz probably because he was the elder of the three and his two friends for misrepresenting Him (42:7). God’s rebuke of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar was a clear vindication of the man Job. It was true that in his misery, anger, frustration and stubbornness, Job said things that he had to regret and repent of. In all of this God still said of him, “as my servant Job hath” Job was an example of one who spoke what was correct and true. They had insisted that suffering is a result of God’s punishment for sin. That is not always true, and Job is a classic case that confirms this.

2. God therefore commands Job’s three friends to offer seven bulls and seven rams as a burnt offering (42:8). This was a huge sacrifice proportional with their sin of misrepresenting God. Job forgave them and prayed for his friends (42:10), this was a sign of his genuine forgiveness. It appears from the text that God’s blessings upon Job were not just dependent upon repentance but also upon what?? … forgiving those who had wronged him. The act of praying for his friends and restoring his relationship with them in a sense freed Job from captivity thus we have the statement the LORD turned the captivity of Job. When Job forgave and prayed for his friends, the Lord blessed him with the awesome restoration of twice what he had.
God bless Job with restored health!
Application:
Un-forgiveness will make you a prisoner! If we want the full blessing of God upon our lives we must not only confess all sin to God but also be willing to forgive and pray for those who have wronged us. When we refuse to forgive, we hurt no one but ourselves and our relationship with God.

III. Jobs’ Restoration vv. 11-17

1. The Bible does not say how long Job experience this time of lost and suffering. In Job 7:3 it references months of hardship. Job’s brothers, and all his sisters, and all those who had been his acquaintances before now come and they dined with Job and comforted him. (42:11)They all contribute to his need and brought money to him for a new start. Job probably used the money to purchase breeders for his new herds, which resulted in double the flocks he had before (42:12). God bless him with restored wealth.

2. Job had twenty children, ten at home and ten with the Lord (42:13). Let this be a lesson to us that our love ones don’t stop being our love ones. God bless him with a restored heredity.
God added the special blessing of granting him three beautiful daughters; so fair were they that in all the land none were found as fair as the daughters of Job (42:15).

We are given their names in verse 14; Jemima means “turtle-dove” This is a very beautiful and innocent bird…she later became a famous maker of cakes, pancakes. 🙂 Keziah means “cinnamon perfume.” Keren-Happuch means “horn of eye-paint.” The idea was that she was so beautiful that she needed no cosmetics. They were beautiful but I wouldn’t recommend them in a list of names for your baby girls.

3. The Lord also doubled the length of Job’s life (42:16-17). Job’s life ended long and blessed. Job lived to see four more generations of his grandchildren.

Conclusion:

This ends the remarkable story of Job. We must not conclude that all adversity will have a happy ending like that of Job’s, because often it does not. Job teaches that suffering does not come from some kind of terrible sin that a person commits. We can suffer consequences of sin. Instead, suffering comes from some divine reason of God that man may not fully understand. When man suffers, yes we question God, but we must trust Him.

The book of Job reveals that God uses the pain of His children for some definite purpose. There are many reasons why God allows us to experience adversity. The greatest, the most important purposes were accomplished by this trial. Job became a much better man than he ever was before. The suffering of Job explains much about why character is more important in God’s eyes than the discomfort and pain that we experience in this life. Adversity often inspires others to have more faith.

“We are not all like Job, but we all have Job’s God. Though we have neither risen to Job’s wealth, nor will, probably, ever sink to Job’s poverty, yet there is the same God above us if we be high, and the same God with his everlasting arms beneath us if we be brought low; and what the Lord did for Job he will do for us, not precisely in the same form, but in the same spirit, and with like design.” (Spurgeon)
No matter what the test may be the trials to come or pain and suffering we are to know through it all He is able. Let’s sing that as we close.

He is able!!