How Job Foreshadows Christ

Luke 24:27—“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

In the West, we tend to read Old Testament stories to understand how to live moral or abundant lives. We look at David and ask how we can be like him, courageous in the face of giants. We can learn things from the Old Testament stories that can inspire our lives, but that is not how Jesus or the New Testament writers saw the Old Testament. They viewed the Old Testament as pointing to Christ. They viewed the stories as telling us something about the Savior that was to come.

I recently read through Job and listened to this sermon by Tim Mackie, and my view of the book has forever changed. Mackie’s teaching shows us a “melody” or pattern in the Old Testament that is repeated over and over and how all of it points to Christ. What I’m sharing below is a mix of what I learned from Mackie and how I took it further in my own study of Job.

How Job Foreshadows Christ

He is given into the hands of the enemy to bring suffering, even though Job was “blameless and upright” and though he “feared God and shunned evil.” (Job 1:1) Jesus, the most blameless and upright human being that ever lived on earth, was also given into the hands of the enemy by God. The purpose in the case of Jesus was for salvation and to become a mediator between humanity and the Father. When we look at Job, we see a very similar pattern. As we will see later, Job was also a mediator of sorts.

His wife and his friends mock him. His friends accuse him. Jesus was mocked by both enemies and “friends” Those who had once followed him turned away from his teachings that were too hard and later played a part in his crucifixion. Specifically, Judas had been a friend of Jesus, one of his inner circle, and he played a major role in Jesus being handed over to the enemy. Peter, another one of Jesus’ closest friends denied even knowing Jesus. All the disciples scattered when Jesus was arrested.

He laments to God rather than turning away from God in his distress. This is not a perfect parallel because Job lamented to God, but He also accused God of being unjust. Jesus lamented to God in the garden before he was handed over. He lamented to God on the cross.

He becomes a mediator for his friends in the end. His friends bring sacrifices commanded by God, and Job prays for them. God tells the friends that He will accept Job’s prayer for them and not deal with them according to their folly. Job mediated for his friends, just as Christ became the mediator for all humanity if they are willing to accept Him as their mediator. (Job 42:8)

Ultimately, God blesses Job with twice the number of livestock he had before and gives him three daughters and seven sons. Job gave an inheritance to his daughters as well as to his sons. This was not the norm in ancient times. Inheritance generally went only to the sons, with the firstborn given the most inheritance and, therefore, the most responsibility. The salvation that comes through Christ is our inheritance—it is given to all, slave and free, male and female, Jew and Greek. (Galatians 3:28)

One of the things Mackie points out in his sermon is that we are okay with Jesus being turned over to the enemy by God to save humanity, but for some reason, we don’t like that Job was turned over to the enemy to essentially save his friends. That led me to think about the fact that all of the Old Testament heroes were in some way given over to the enemy. Joseph was turned over to the Egyptians and suffered greatly. Moses suffered greatly but in different ways. Can you imagine being the leader of two million people? How much complaining they did, and how they blamed Moses as much as they blamed God. The prophets were mocked and hated by the people for speaking the truth.

A big takeaway from Job is that God is not our enemy. He is not responsible for the evil done in the world. When people blame God for their pain, they are doing exactly what the enemy wants them to do. The enemy doesn’t care if we worship him as long as we don’t worship the One True God. Stop blaming and accusing God for the pain brought about in your life by the evil one.