Repentance and Restoration

Job 42:1-17 

1 Then Job answered the LORD and said:

2 "I know that You can do everything,
And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You.

3 You asked, Who is this who hides counsel without knowledge?'
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

4 Listen, please, and let me speak;
You said, I will question you, and you shall answer Me.'

5 "I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear,
But now my eye sees You.
6 Therefore I abhor myself,
And repent in dust and ashes."

    7 And so it was, after the LORD had spoken these words to Job, that the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, "My wrath is aroused against you and your two friends, for you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has. 8 Now therefore, take for yourselves seven bulls and seven rams, go to My servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and My servant Job shall pray for you. For I will accept him, lest I deal with you according to your folly; because you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has."

    9 So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as the LORD commanded them; for the LORD had accepted Job. 10 And the LORD restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. 11 Then all his brothers, all his sisters, and all those who had been his acquaintances before, came to him and ate food with him in his house; and they consoled him and comforted him for all the adversity that the LORD had brought upon him. Each one gave him a piece of silver and each a ring of gold.

    12 Now the LORD blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning; for he had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, one thousand yoke of oxen, and one thousand female donkeys. 13 He also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 And he called the name of the first Jemimah, the name of the second Keziah, and the name of the third Keren-Happuch. 15 In all the land were found no women so beautiful as the daughters of Job; and their father gave them an inheritance among their brothers.

    16 After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children and grandchildren for four generations. 17 So Job died, old and full of days.

After Job heard from the LORD and from Elihu who prepared Job as directed by God, he realized his sin and repented.  Job admitted God alone is omnipotent and that He is sovereignly providential in all He plans and does.  Nothing happens outside of God’s preordained will, and no man or other created being can thwart His working and decrees.  God had questioned His servant about his speaking without understanding God’s hidden will, and then Job confessed that he had been talking as if he understood the ways and thoughts of the Almighty, but did not really know at all what God was doing.  He got it all wrong in his own human reasoning and skewed assumptions.  These things he freely confessed as his sin before God in the end.  He further asked God to hear his confession as we can likewise confess to our great High Priest (Hebrews 4:14, 16, 1 John 1:9), humbling himself when he realized God’s holiness and majesty and power.  He saw who God is and repented as He abhorred his own sinfulness in light of God’s holiness.  He despised his spiritual condition in an act of repentance, just as we do when Christ opens the eyes of our hearts and ears to see who He is and our falling short of His glory and holiness.  We who now know Christ have had that moment of regeneration as we heard the gospel of hope and reconciliation of restoration with opened ears, then we admitted and confessed our sin in light of our sinful state, throwing ourselves on His mercy in Christ for deliverance from sin’s death grip on us all.  As the LORD then told Job’s friends, we spoke what was right in doing the work of God with trust in God’s work in Christ (John 6:29, Ephesians 1:13).  Job had his possessions added back and family rebuilt, and led a full life after the adversity and restoration.  We who are in Christ have heavenly treasures given which we never had before, with brothers and sisters in abundance far beyond what we ever had before our deliverance and rebirth.  The story of Job is a reminder of God’s working in us leading to salvation, but also of the transformative power of the gospel to those who confess Him as Lord in spirit and truth by means of God’s providential grace in our words and in our hearts when we see Him for who He is (high and lifted up as in Isaiah 6:1) and who we are (Romans 3:20, 6:23), hopelessly lost in sin apart from Him (Acts 2:39, Romans 3:25, Ephesians 2:13, Colossians 1:20).  We have been rescued and restored to the fellowship with God in Christ as intended in the beginning in Eden’s Garden, through repentance and restoration, and we will die but once and then live forever, full of days in His presence!