Art Toombs Ministries 

Online Bible Commentary

                                      Finding Delight in the Almighty 

Job 22:21 "Submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you. 22 Accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart. 23 If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored: If you remove wickedness far from your tent 24 and assign your nuggets to the dust, your gold of Ophir to the rocks in the ravines, 25 then the Almighty will be your gold, the choicest silver for you. 26 Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty and will lift up your face to God. 27 You will pray to him, and he will hear you, and you will fulfill your vows. 28 What you decide on will be done, and light will shine on your ways. 29 When men are brought low and you say, 'Lift them up!' then he will save the downcast. 30 He will deliver even one who is not innocent, who will be delivered through the cleanness of your hands." (NIV)

 

Job’s three friends continue to wrongly accuse him. Job has suffered greatly because God was testing him, and yet Job’s friends are convinced that all hardship comes as a result of sin. They continue to try to convince him that his sin has brought the wrath of God upon him, and Job continues to claim that he has been faithful to God. In this passage, Job’s friend Eliphaz gives godly counsel to Job. His counsel does not apply to Job, who is faithful, but applies to those who are not in right relationship with God. 

When we “submit to God’ we will be at peace with Him (v. 21a). Submitting to God means obedience to God. Our first act of obedience is to repent of our sins. We repent, turn from our sinful lifestyle, and ask God to forgive us of our sins. We receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior, becoming a Christian. The Holy Spirit then indwells, us helping us to live a life that honors the Lord. We are then at peace with God, having abandoned our sinful lifestyle and repaired our relationship with Him. God cannot bless sin, but now God can bless us because we have abandoned sin as a lifestyle (v.21b). We will still make mistakes and sin but these sins are covered by the grace of God. 

We continue our obedience to the Lord as we “accept instruction from his mouth and lay up his words in your heart” through reading and studying His word, the Bible (v.22). Our relationship with God is “restored” when we forsake our sinful lifestyle and find fulfillment in God instead of the things of the world VV. 23-25). We then “find delight in the Almighty” and look to Him for all things (v.26). 

When we become one of God’s children, a Christian, he then hears our prayers (v.27a). As we walk in obedience to Him our prayers are answered because we are praying in His will. He has changed our desires so that we are now thinking like Him and our will is now aligned to His will. God grants all that is asked in His will. Jesus said “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” (John 14:14). We will walk in His light and His light will shine upon us through blessings (vv.27b-28). 

We will pray for others and God will even grant blessings to them. When we pray for others to find His salvation, God will hear our prayers and they will be “delivered” through our prayers (vv. 29-30). We can become prayer warriors for our loved ones when we are in right relationship with the Lord. “The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (James 5:17). 

This Old Testament passage aligns with New Testament teachings. The God of the Old Testament is the same God of the New Testament. The teaching of the coming of the Messiah in the Old Testament was fulfilled by the coming of Jesus in the New Testament. The Old Testament points to the coming of Christ and the New Testament tells of Christ’s ministry and the church age that followed. 

This passage did not apply to Job, because he was already a faithful follower of God. However, the blessings described were blessings that Job enjoyed as a child of God. Part of the blessing is to be able to withstand the inevitable hardships that come upon both the righteous and the unrighteous. Being a Christian does not exempt us from having hardships in life. Job was faithful to God but still had hardships. Job wrestled with God, trying to understand the tragedy that had befallen him. Much of the book of Job details his wrestling with God and his responses to the off target advice of his friends. Through it all, Job remained obedient to God. “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him” (Job 13:15). This is the blessing of walking in obedience to God. We become so entrenched in Him that nothing will cause us to stray. This is the faith that we should all set as our goal. This is finding delight in the Almighty.