When the dialogue between Job and the friends began, Job expressed his ignorance over what the Lord was doing in his life, as well as his depression over the fact that his worldview had disintegrated before his very eyes, vis-à-vis for all intents and purposes, he faced nothing but chaos for the remainder of his life. Nothing made any sense anymore. How should Job live? In other words, Job felt lost, because everything that he built his life upon was like a foundation of sand that the great storm had taken away (cp. Matthew 7:26-27).
The Book of Judges is an interesting work. The events that take place within its text span hundreds of years. The children of Israel were blessed by God, but after awhile they wandered away from him, so the Lord gave them over to their desires and caused an enemy to rule over them. Afterward, the Israelites would admit their error and cry out to the Lord, he would then save them through a hero among them, and so the cycle keeps repeating itself throughout the era of the book. The moral is men aren’t very faithful in their walk with the Lord, but when they realize their error and repent, the Lord returns and saves them. This is how the Lord treats the lost. The lost are folks who want to serve God but end up doing the wrong things. Another group often compared to the lost are those who totally reject God. These are the rebels. They aren’t simply lost; they actually love the darkness they’re in (cp. John 3:19). What the Lord does with these folks is give them over to a strong delusion, meaning they have great confidence in their false worldview, so they refuse to change and therein they’ll be judged (cp. 2Thessalonians 2:10).
The New Covenant text unveils the truth about what God wants. He wants us to be in a good relationship with man. However, if we reject him, he permits us that right, and he brings judgment down upon us in the form of his walking further and further away from us, vis-à-vis giving us what we want to believe and/or lust after. Therefore, we end up in a totally disgusting condition, and in such a context, we’ve lost all semblance of self-control and are overcome by our various lusts (Romans 1:18-32). The difference between the rejectors of truth (the rebels) and those who are ignorant of the truth, vis-à-vis the lost, is that God simply lets his servants have their way, wherein they feel lost or in darkness, and that brings suffering, which in turn encourages repentance (the theme of the Book of Judges). On the other hand, the Lord judges the rebels in his wrath, often not permitting repentance, while they descend further and further in self-destruction. This is in contrast to his discipline of his children (Hebrews 12:6) in order to bring them to repentance and avoid destruction.
In the context of the Book of Job, we find that the Lord, through the adversary, had begun to discipline Job. God called Job his servant (Job 1:8; 2:3), so what occurs is discipline, not judgement, as the friends and Elihu perceive due to their false worldview. Job realizes he isn’t being judged, because he knows he hasn’t done anything wicked that would warrant such things to occur in his life. However, Job feels lost in the wilderness of ignorance and doesn’t know the way out. His worldview is broken, and he has nothing, with which to replace it.
A point we need to consider, however, is, unlike the Book of Judges, wherein God’s servants wandered away by embracing immorality, Job wandered away from God by placing his trust in good works. Job was lost in the wilderness of morality/good works, not immorality/wicked works. This, according to Jesus, is a much more difficult wilderness to be rescued out of. A person who is lost in the idea that he is a good person, a moral person who serves God, sees no reason to change, because he isn’t some great sinner, who has rebelled against the Lord. Comparing himself with others only fortifies his belief that he’s okay, and is serving the Lord. How does God break through such a facade of righteous behavior, in order to show his servant he is going down a wrong path to destruction. Well, as Jesus said of the self-righteous man, whom he said he loved, such a one will find it impossible to save himself, but all things are possible for God (Matthew 19:23-26)! Thus, we see in Jesus’ words the reason for God breaking into Job’s righteous life in order to save him from himself!
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