Job 29:18

All this honour, together with his own generosity, made life very attractive to Job. He pushed the end far off into the distance. When it came, it would find him comfortable in his "nest." He would stretch out the days of his life like countless grains of sand. Some read the word instead as the phoenix, the immortal bird of legend. The reading in our version gives a simpler and worthier sense. It also matches the way Scripture uses this picture elsewhere (1 Kings 4:29; Gen. 22:17). Another suggestion is that Job refers to the palm tree — "The righteous flourish like the palm tree." Either way the meaning is clear. He would live on without interruption, like a well-watered tree.

He said himself, "I shall die in my nest," Job 29:18; and it is recorded again that "he was righteous in his own eyes," Job 32:1. In the first statement Job was in danger of putting his confidence in the wealth God had blessed him with. In the second he was sure he deserved it. But it was God, and not the nest, who kept him safe. And it was God's estimate of his righteousness that counted, not his own. Job needed to learn these two things, and for his own safety and blessing God was about to teach him… Satan set about to destroy everything Job had put his confidence in — his family, his wealth, his health. But the one thing he could not destroy was his faith.

Job 29 has become one of the great "I" chapters of the Bible. Ecclesiastes 2 is Solomon's "I" chapter: that personal pronoun appears 16 times in the first 9 verses — the chapter of the self-gratified "I." Job 29 is the chapter of the self-satisfied "I." Romans 7 is of course the chapter of the self-condemned "I." And to be self-condemned is far better than to be self-gratified or self-satisfied.

"Then I thought, I shall die in my nest." No, no; God was going to disturb that nice nest of his that was so warm and comfortable. "And I shall multiply my days as the sand." Why, he had been very eager for God to cut his days short. That was the only way he could see out of all the trouble he was going through.

And it was a hard lesson for him, difficult to learn and take in. He did not like — and which of us does? — to accept the sentence of death in himself. Yet that was the point: he was not to trust in himself, or in his circumstances in life, or in his natural condition, but in God who raises the dead. "I shall die in my nest" was his thought and his hope. But he was to see his nest stripped bare. Nature had filled it and circumstances had decorated it, and all of it was taken away.

There is a difference — I would even say a distance — between a righteous man and a devoted man… At the beginning of this history, Job was a righteous man. He was spoken well of again and again, right in front of his accuser. But he was not a devoted man. The whisper of his heart, as I noticed before, was this: "I shall die in my nest."

But should we not be using our wings now? Yet how ready we are to make our nest here! Job thought he would die in his nest (Job 29:18), but what a shaking poor Job got! Yet was it not in love, for his ultimate good? So it always is when the Lord stirs up our nest and shakes everything here. Is it not so that we may learn to fly?

Job had been an example in his conduct and his reliability. So he felt quite sure this prosperity would continue undisturbed… How differently things turned out from what he thought! Do we also think we can depend on past experience to sustain us for the future? If so, we forget that we are always totally dependent on the grace of God.