Job 21 Summary - 5 Minute Bible Study

Job 21 Short Summary:

In Job 21, Job challenged his friends with the most obvious contradiction to their conclusion that God ALWAYS punishes the wicked on earth. Job pointed out that many wicked men flourish on earth and never receive an obvious punishment for their sins. Job told his friends they didn’t have to take his word for it, those who had travelled the roads would testify to it.  

Job 21 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:

• THE EVIL FLOURISH AND THE WICKED LIVE AT EASE (21:1-34):

  • In chapter 21, Job reinforced the most obvious contradiction to his friend’s logic, the fact that wicked men flourish all over the earth and go to their graves in peace.

  • Job was sitting in misery, while evil people lived comfortably.

  • He asked his friends why wicked men live to old age, increase in power, and multiply in wealth if it was true that God always punishes wicked people?

  • Job knew bad people whose houses were full of children, they were safe from fear, their harvests were abundant, and their cattle were fat.

  • These bad people didn’t care anything for God. They said to Him, “Depart from us! We do not desire the knowledge of your ways. What is the Almighty that we should serve Him? And what profit do we get if we pray to Him?

  • According to Job’s friends, these arrogant people should be crushed by the discipline of God, yet their lives weren’t marked by any obvious signs of God’s anger.

  • Apparently, Job’s friends had a rebuttal to this point, which Job addressed in verse 19-20. They said that if a wicked person wasn’t punished directly, God’s anger was stored up and poured out on their children.

  • Job rejected this view. It didn’t make sense to him that God would allow an evil man to live and die in peace and then give the punishment to his children. Evil self-centered men didn’t care what happened to their descendants after they died.

  • Job admitted that he didn’t understand the way God worked, but it was clear that his friends weren’t right.

  • What can a human know about the way God judges or how He determines the length and prosperity of a person’s life.

  • Job’s friends wouldn’t accept that his words were impartial, so Job asked them to consult with the travelers on the road. They would confirm the truth in Job’s statements, that wicked men flourished and escaped the punishments due to them for their sins.

  • Job declared his friend’s conclusions to be observably wrong and nothing more than obvious falsehoods.

APPLICATION

• God’s execution of justice and our understanding of justice don’t always overlap perfectly.

• We don’t need to understand why God deals out justice the way He does or on the timeline He does, we just need to trust that He will make things right.

• As humans, we want justice now! We want to see evil repaid in our day!

• But God is working with an eternal perspective, whereas we are working with a temporal perspective, and with a very small piece of the temporal pie at that.  

• As followers of Jesus, our mission is not to go throughout the world and ensure that justice is done in every place. We couldn’t do it even if we tried. We are poor judges.

• God will see to the distribution of justice in His time.

• As we wait for Him to act, we are tasked with teaching the Gospel of Grace, letting people know that the Great Judge extends pardon to all who have committed evil actions, and that His final judgement is preceded by a era of mercy.

• Mark 16:15-16 - “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”

• The day of perfect justice is coming, until then let’s publish the Judge’s offer of pardon, which all of us who are in Christ have benefitted from.