Inland Empire: Riverside
My Servant Job - Audio
[Music] Welcome, welcome. Good to see everybody. Okay, yeah. Good to see you guys. Who's here for the tennis tournament, anybody? No? Okay, that's a thing here. You know that? [Laughter] Yeah, that's a lot of people. It's Laquinta. Is that where it is? Indian Wells? A lot of people. So, my name is Jason. For those of you who have never seen my face, I am excited for our time today because as you see, we're going to talk a bit about the book called Job, which has been a special companion in the life of faith for me, for many, but it has a kind of gravitational force in my life. I keep getting pulled back to Job. Seems like on a regular basis. A few times a year. But I think Job is appropriate at this time of the year because as I've been trying to describe that this is a time that the church looks toward the darkness, which feels like a very odd thing to do, but there's value in it. Especially because we sense by looking at the darkness, and I mean darkness in society, but especially darkness in our own lives. If we don't look, it's still there, but it allows the light to be light indeed. Especially as Easter is on the horizon, and resurrection is a firm foundation for us that often slides under the radar in favor of a kind of bodyless hope in heaven. So, this is a great text for this moment because if you're not familiar with Job, buckle up. We're going a few levels down this afternoon, but I think you'll leave with a sense of wonder from this wonderful text and a sense of hope. Job appeared on my radar early on in the life of faith. Just because of its what it's about. We'll get into that in a bit here. But around the time that my wife and I were grappling with infertility, we weren't just wrestling with infertility. We were also wrestling with our friends' fertility. They were all getting pregnant while we were learning that another human's not going to emerge from our bodies. And that was a difficult thing. Way harder than I would imagine that would have been if you told me. But at the same time, I was in a graduate program which focused on Hebrew. And I was getting ready to begin a class. They had these text cycles. And one year was Job. And that was followed with Ecclesiastes and Ben-Sira and the Proverbs. But I felt like going into Job, especially where I was at the moment, this is going to be a bumpy ride. It's one of these texts that I don't want to know too much about because I have a weird, probably look at God through the lens of an abused person. But in my mind, I was thinking the more I know about suffering, the more God's going to allow me to suffer. I was worried about what I might encounter. But also feeling like this could be really good and it definitely was. It demystified some of the challenges of Job. But it also gave me like five million other challenges from Job. It showed me just how challenging this book actually is. Now, here's a number of reasons why Job is good for us. Number one, if you imagine God as a kind of package of truths or propositions, that you conveniently fit in your pocket and pull God out when you need to defend "the truth". That God can be kind of handled and understood very, very well in managed. Job will be a confrontation for that reader. Do you remember in the Narnia stories, I think it was in the lion witch in the wardrobe, where the little girl asks about the great lion, Aslan. And she's a little nervous about meeting a lion. And she asks the beaver, "Is the lion safe?" And the beavers kind of laugh, like no. You ever met a safe lion? But he's good, they say. But he's good. There's something like that going on in the Bible, right? God is far from safe. But he's good. He's not domesticated like a house cat or something like that. But God is wild, and dangerous. But he's good. Job sets that on full display. I think if you're like me, this, and I've probably talked about this before, but this is kind of how I imagine God. Are you familiar with this? Pinning, collecting, and then pinning and staging insects so that you can examine them in all of their parts and their anatomy. You probably did this in like 5th grade or in your field trip to the field museum in 3rd grade or something like this. And I think sometimes, at least for me, it's not just at least for me. I've been around long enough to know us for a lot of y'all too. We tend to open the Bible and imagine we're getting something like this, that God can just be studied and figured out all the way through. And we'll get a handle on God, just like we might be able to pin and stage a butterfly, we can kind of pin and stage God and analyze all of his parts. And that works for a little while. When we do that, we walk around with this very organized view of life and of God and of the life of faith and church and then something difficult happens, and God forbids something very difficult happens, and that order that perceived coherence we have of God just gets wrecked. Have you ever been there? Stay tuned if you haven't. But this has been true over and over again in my life. What is going on? Now when I say what is going on, I'm not actually asking a question. It's an exclamation point. It's this sucks. This hurts. Two years ago, let's see, two years ago I've shared this with you before. My younger brother passed from an overdose, got a hard batch of heroin with fentanyl in it, and that's about all it takes. And I was privileged to share the eulogy at my little brother's funeral. The most difficult privilege I think I've had yet. And I had no idea what I would say. And that day's leading up to his wake, I stumbled across in my reading of R. S. Thomas, and I offer R. S. Thomas to you if you're not familiar with him. He's a treasure to the church and beyond. But this helps me. And I think this will also set up our discussion from Job, or in Job. How you doing? You have made God small, setting him a stride, a pipette, or a retort. Those are apparently instruments you find in a laboratory where you study things. Okay, you know. I didn't know that. Studying the bubbles absorbed in an experiment that will come to nothing. I think of him rather as an enormous owl abroad in the shadows, brushing me sometimes with his wings so the blood in my veins freezes. So, to find his way from one soul to another because he can see in the dark. I needed to have this vision of God, oddly in my darkest hour. Because I think we tend to look at, there's this whole excitement within Christian communities about, you've heard of this apologetics defending what God is like. And that's all sounds great until your little brother dies. And you realize like you don't understand much. We spend all of our energy absorbed and trying to defend and analyze and describe who God is. And as he says, this is my experience. I don't mean to be bleak with you. We'll get to some hope in about a half hour but prepare for some bleakness. It's all for nothing. He says, "But I think of God more like an owl who's flying around at night dangerous and violent to every other creature out that evening." That's a troubling image for God, I think. You ever thought of God as dangerous and violent? He says, "That helps me understand God more than the data we get from the printout of our Bible study." Looking at, well, why? Because think of an owl. She does her best work when when you go to sleep, when we retire for the day, she goes out into the dark swift and careful and able to isolate her prey. She can see in the dark we can't. And nor do we really understand what's happening in darkness. I won't try to tidy that up any more than that. That helps me. Now, when we turn to Job, I'm going to do what you shouldn't do when you teach from the Bible. And that is to summarize the whole book. In my summary, please, if you have the energy, go read it because you can flatten things out that needs to stand out. And Job really needs to be read, not summarized by a preacher. But if you're familiar with the story, here's about how it goes. Job, more introduced to this man named Job, and he's not in Israelite. And in case you didn't know the Christian Bible is inextricably linked to Israel. He's not in Israelite. We learn he is from a town or a place called Uts. That's about all we know. And it's a very fairytale-like story. It is definitely a once upon a time type of story. We're introduced to this man. Now, many imagine that this book, this part of the Bible, is the oldest book of the Bible. I don't think that's true. In fact, if you get those chronological study Bibles, you know what I'm talking about, first thing you should do when you get that is put it away because they don't understand what's happening. Books like Job are in dialogue with the rest of the Hebrew scriptures. It's pretty late. And probably the book of Job emerges when Israel isn't a crisis in their exile. And so Israel has to grapple with the story of Job in their lives. But here's a story. You imagine you're in Israelite. You're a search-going type. And you pick up this book and it's a different religion, a different denomination, a different culture and race, the other. We're introduced to Job from Uts. And Job, we are told, is incredibly wealthy. Super wealthy. All kinds of livestock. He has 2.5 children on Elm Street in a two-story home with a white picket fence. Job has the dream situation. But it's even deeper than that because he is rigidly devoted to God. He's committed to God in ways that stand out which is a dangerous thing to do we're going to learn. You're better to keep it, keep it on mute or whatever. Keep it on the DL, right? You're righteousness. Don't get too righteous. You might end up like Job or Jesus or somebody like that. Job, we are told, God even says of Job. He is. He shuns evil. He is upright. He fears the Lord. Job has the perfect life and a good heart. And that's really important. Job is not a story about an every man. Job ain't a story about just any old person. It's a story about a special person, a good person. Job will be called in this story by God of the my servant. Now that's a title reserved for the best. Only a handful of people in the scriptures are called by God or with reference to God, my servant, Abram Moses, David, oddly Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, the suffering servants in the stories of Isaiah, Jesus. This is an honorable title. Dude, this is God's servant, which is important for what's about to happen to him as readers of this story. How are you doing? A lot of blank looks, okay. We are cut from this presentation of this amazing man with an amazing life and we are in a sentence transported to the heavenlies where we find the Lord Yahweh, the God of Israel, the High God in the center, supposedly of a heavenly gathering, a convocation, and the High God the Lord has surrounding him like he often does in the Bible his little gods, or Bene Elohim, the gods. This is a common theme what's going on in heaven, the great Lord surrounded by the little gods. And into this assembly walks a figure named Ha Satan, the Satan. Now don't think Satan as in the New Testament it's not like a name, it's a title. Now this shows up a lot in the Bible, right? Ha Satan, it's more like an office, more like a spy. If you're familiar with the story of Balaam in his donkeys, and he's walking on the road and there in front of him is Ha Satan, challenging, poking. It's not a bad thing to have someone challenge our ways, to poke holes in our plans, to prove and refine like a devil's advocate kind of figure. And the satan walks into this assembly and it appears to me at least that he has a chip on his shoulder. But the Lord says, "What are you doing here effectively?" And the satan says, "Nothing to report sir." I've been going back and forth in the land and I don't have anything to complain about, I don't have anything to draw your attention to. And oddly God brings up his servant, Jo. He says, "If you set your heart, have you considered my servant?" There's no one like him. There's no one like him. There's no one as righteous as this guy all the way through. He is the, as we say, the pillar member of the church. He's on the elder board. This guy understands it. And what does the satan say of this righteous person who we know is righteous? It's not a lie. What does he say? He's married for money. He's in it for what he gets out of it. Take his stuff. We'll see if he's still early to church on Sunday. Take his stuff. I will bet you, Lord, if you take away all of his wealth, he is going to curse you to your face. That's a good question that the satan has asked, isn't it? Think about it. How do we know that Job is in fact a good person? How do we know like deep down his heart? How do you know? How do you know that he's not getting up every morning, offering his sacrifice, having quiet times? And by the way, he even offers sacrifices for his children in case they sin in their hearts. This is a guy who's doing all the right things. But how do you know it's true? He could just be doing it for the stuff. Would you still come to church if you weren't promised a good life? Would he still wake up and do what he does the next day if you took his stuff? How do we know? There's only one way to find out. Take his stuff. So to our horror, what does the Lord say? Okay. Go ahead. I think this will turn out good. Go ahead. But don't you dare kill that man. Go ahead. We're taken right from heaven back to Job's life and in rapid succession his servants, one after the other, one sentence after the next. I was out in the field and the fire of God fell and it killed all your livestock. There was a foreign army they were organized and they divided and they came down on us and they took your servants. They killed all the rest of the servants. I'm the only one to escape to tell you this bad news. And then another one comes and says your children as they often do were having their Saturday night party at their house and a wind came in, knocked the corners of the home and it flattened on top of them and all your kids are dead. Like in three sentences, Job's whole life spills out for a test, for an experiment in heaven. Well, what's Job's response? Well, here's what Job says after everything gets taken from him. Then Job arose because I'm sure he fell to his knees. Tore his robe, shaved his head and fell on the ground, again, presumably, and worshipped. He said, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I returned there, the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Would you say that? That's part of the point. No one's like this dude. Okay. Round two. How are you doing? Okay, alright. Round two. Right back to heaven as readers. We're taken right back into the heavenly assembly. Once again, there is the Lord with his angelic-like figures surrounding him. And Hasatan, the Satan comes in and what are you doing here? Nothing to report, sir. Have you set your heart on Job? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We already did the Job thing. I took his stuff. Yeah, you took his stuff. I didn't hear a curse. In fact, he blessed God. Blessed be the name of the Lord, right? I didn't hear a curse. Skin for skin, this Satan says. Smite his body. Give him cancer. Take away his health. Make it so that his life is delicate, not just his possessions. Then we'll see what you got. Because a man will do anything for his life. So, okay, don't kill him though. Transported right back to Job's life. And there he is afflicted as it said from the top of his head to the soul of his foot in sores. And there he is, bereaved of his children. His wealth is gone. His status we will learn as gone as well. And he's deathly ill. Here's his response. This is breathtaking. Job took a pot shirt with which to scrape himself and sat among the ashes. Then his wife said to him, do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God and die. But he said to her, you speak as any of the foolish girls in town would speak. Shall we receive from God? Good and not receive evil. And all this Job did not sin with his lips. Now his wife has to be the worst part of the test, I think. She doesn't realize what she's going him to do. Now maybe she's just looking out for him because who wants to live like that? I don't want to be too hard on her but he says you talk like a little girl like an idiot. Like where's your mind? The text says by the way, bless God. But there seems to be an anxiety of even having those two words next to each other in the revival curse in God. But we know what's meant. Curse God. Because she knows that if you curse God he will kill you. That's the kind of God he is. If you kill him, you're dead. The world's very easy to understand. She says, we can't just get all the gifts from God. And not be faithful when he takes them all away. He's good. Job gets it. Okay so, his friends learn of all that's happened to him and he has like the best friends. Do you have friends in your life that will surround you when everything is lost? Well you'll find out. I pray you do. I think you will if you're a part of God's family. But some don't. But Job, and Job is a well-known man. Job's friends learn of his plight and they organize a trip to go and see him. Now Job's been suffering for a while at this point. And the text says, while they're still a long way off, it's this kind of, oh my God, look at our friend. Look at what's left of him. Here's this man who was a stately judge in town. Sitting in ashes, wrecked, gaunt, smelly, lost his whole family. His wife is not helping him out and they see their friends and they tear their robes and they join him in the dust. And they do what good friends do. Take a note of Christians. They shut their mouths. Shut up. Be quiet. Now is not the time for your understanding of God in the world. Just zip it and sit still with this man in his grief. And they sit with him for seven days. They sit silently with this wrecked man. And then after seven days, Job is no longer singing the same tune. You ever had that happen? You ever lose your job on Friday? I have. And you say it's okay, God will take care of me. And Monday you're like, what is going on? I'm cursed. God's left me. It only takes a little bit of time for us to get our bearings and get back to the old. This is tough. But that's normal, right? That's not necessarily wrong. And I'm going to make the case the book of Job is about affirming that. Job opens his mouth that says the text is very slow. We're waiting here here it comes. It's either going to be another blessing or here comes the curse. It's been stewing for a while. Here it comes. Job opens his mouth and he curses the text that says, but he curses his birthday. And he goes on a long complaint. The first words we hear from Job is a long lament. And it's heavy. It's too much for his buddies. He says, get the fattest, you know, like we used to write like hand style graffiti, you know, the big fat sharpie markers. Get one of those. Walk over to the calendar. Find my birthday and put an X right there. Because get rid of my birthday. May clouds descend upon it and cover it up. May it be forgotten. Go from March 12th to March 14th. Forget my birthday. Don't think about me. The night when my parents had sex and they shouted for joy because I was conceived, forget about that. May that night, may they howl on that night. There weren't breasts to feed me when I came out of the womb or knees to receive me. I wish I had died as a stillborn because at least then I'd be at rest in the netherworld with the great kings of history. But instead, and he closes this complaint like this, what I feared has come upon me. What I've been dreading my whole life is happening. And now his friends, Job's friends, cannot handle this level of honesty. And the story starts to really heat up. How you doing? We're going to move fast pretty soon. They start throwing at Job all of their training from their pastor and their preacher and their first principal studies. All of the things they know to be true about God, they start to remind Job. They can't handle this level of honesty. Wait a second, Job. Before you start throwing a fit, we know how the world works, don't we? We all can agree the world is very simple. It goes like this. You do good. You get good. That's how the world operates. There's plenty of passages even in the Bible that say something like that. You do good. You get good. So be good if you want good. But the reverse is true as well. We know that. You do bad. You get bad. So before you start running off at the mouth with all of your pain and your authenticity, Job, remember bad things don't happen to good people. We know that. So you drop the ball somewhere, buddy. You did something wrong. You failed in some way that warrants this reminder that you should turn to God. And they try all manner of explaining what's happening to Job. Job says, "I didn't send." Well, your kids send. You're going to send in the future and God's giving you a down payment, so you're ready. You may try everything to try to help make sense of the fact that a good person is not doing well. That a good church is not thriving. That a righteous individual is not being blessed. They're trying hard to make sense of it because we have to and we only use the tools we have to be able to do that. But Job agrees with the friends at some level that that is, in fact, how the world works. So here's how the book of Job is cracked up. We'll get into the meat of it and we'll exit and we'll have to go and suffer. But Job has like a frame that's like a story. We learn who Job is and what happened to him and at the end we learn what happens to him after he suffers a lot. But in the middle, the longest, most exhausting part of the book are these friends going back and forth trying to make sense of what's happening because you have to. But see, here's the thing. As readers of Job, we know something that all of the characters in the book don't know. Don't we? Job doesn't know about the thing going on in heaven. He has to make sense of it. The friends sure don't have a clue about that. We know the narrator knows, God knows, and the other angelic creatures know. But the characters in the story, they don't know. So we, from the balcony, watch them try to make sense of the pain. And we see ourselves in that, right? This is where there's a silver lining and every grey cloud come from. It's our way of processing the fact that bad things happen and we don't know what to do about it. We're up top watching them scramble and we're like, no, no, you're wrong. And we want to break into the story and tell them there was this thing in heaven. The Satan came. You're suffering because God thinks you're amazing actually. That's really cool. Like we want to just tell him and ease his pain. I'm not sure it would, but we want to. But they go back and forth arguing. You do good. You get good. You do bad. You get bad. Job effectively says, no, no, no, I think I agree with you. But here's the problem. I didn't do anything bad. And we as readers, what do we say? He's right. He didn't do anything bad. He's right. But you know what Job has to do then? The problem's upstairs. God doesn't know how the world works. Watch Job's blessed be the name of the Lord transformation. We'll go on a long journey of them arguing this out. Who's right? Then we'll have Job have some long speeches. Another young man will come about and he'll say a lot of good things but he's also full of hot air and then we're going to hear from God. In the meantime, I'm just going to give you a sampling of some of the places Job goes as he's arguing with his friends. How then? This is Job speaking about God. How then can I answer him choosing my words with him? Though I'm innocent, I cannot answer him. I must appeal to my accuser for my right. If I summoned him and he answered me, I don't believe that he would listen to my voice. For he crushes me with a tempest and multiplies my wounds without cause. He will not let me get my breath but fills me with bitterness. When the disaster brings sudden death, he mocks the calamity of the innocent. The earth is given into the hand of the wicked and he covers the eyes of its judges. If it's not he, then who is it? Although you know I'm not guilty and there is no one to deliver out of your hand. This is Job talking to God. God gives me up to the evil and he casts me in the hands of the wicked. I was at ease and he broke me into. He sees me by the neck and dashed me into pieces. He set me up as his target. His archers surround me. He slashes open my kidneys and shows no mercy. He pours out my gall on the ground. He bursts upon me again and again. He rushes at me like a warrior. Even when I cry out, violence, I'm not answered. I cry aloud but there's no justice. He's walled up my way so that I cannot pass and he has set darkness upon my path. He stripped my glory from me and taken the crown from my head. He breaks me down on every side and I am gone. He's uprooted my hope like a tree. He's kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary. His troops come on together. They have thrown up siege work against, siege works against me and in camp around my tent. I cry to you and you do not answer me. I stand and you just look at me. You've turned cruel to me. With the might of your hand you persecute me. You lift me up on the wind. You make me ride on it. You toss me about in the roar of a storm. I know that you will bring me to death to the house and I'm disappointed for all the living. He's singing a different tune isn't he? Something happened in those seven days where he's sitting quietly with his friends. And now what's his view of God? Or what is he at least saying to God? You're a monster. I want a day in court but you're judge and jury. So you're the one doing this to me so even if I go to court I'm just going to be judged. You're cruel. You're the reason for all the injustice in the world and we got to think is this the sin the Satan was talking about? Is he cursing God and saying all this stuff? Let me ask you would you go to God and say you're cruel. You've turned your back at me. You mock me. What depends on how bad you're hurting. This righteous man. He's not meant to have any indication that he is no longer righteous. But he is hurting. His world is collapsing. His religion and his view of God. Everything is being contested. And we know as readers in the early part of the story we learned that this happened to Job Heenam for no reason. And as soon as we rush in and try to explain why Job is suffering. As soon as we rush in and we say well it's because you're righteous or God's giving you a down payment or there's a silver lining in every cloud or we start to throw our understanding of the good positive God and all of that. At Job we wreck the book. We ruin it because here's the point. He's a good man who is suffering and it is not fair. It is not fair. Any attempt to make this fair. Any attempt to tell Job no no no no no God is wise. He's working about no. Even God says you sent me against him for no reason. This is not fair. What's happening to Job there's no explanation for it. No one is off the hook. God isn't off the hook for this. This is unfair. Ring any bells of a righteous person dying unfairly. This is the theme of the Bible. All of the righteous men over and over find themselves in prison. It's sent into exile persecuted and killed all the way up to the Lord who is the righteous servant of God nailed to the wood, right? This is a theme in Scripture. It's just telling the story again. Righteous people go through hell and it's not fair. It's not fair. But something's happening as the righteous suffer and they maintain their fidelity to God as they suffer unfairly. Something is happening in the world. How are you doing? So Job is finally going to get a word from God. For several chapters he says I want a day in court and he doesn't realize what he's asking for because after a lot of speech the Lord appears and it's the Lord that God of Israel to this foreigner and he appears as God often does appear in the Bible in a storm dangerously volcanoes and eruptions and wind storms even in the garden walking in the storm This is like how God appears the forces of nature convulsing at his descent into the world, right? God appears to Job not in a friendly manner. He doesn't show up as a teddy bear as a little kid. He shows up as a storm this is the last thing this guy needed. God finally appears and I want to read with you some of God's words to Job. We are almost at the end I promise. Look with me at Job if you have a Bible near you. 38. Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man. This is the kind of you want to fight. I will question you and you make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you have understanding who determined its measurements? Surely you know who stretched the line upon it on what were its bases sunk or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst forth from the womb when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors and said "Thus far you shall come and no farther and hear your proud waves shall be stayed. Have you commanded the morning since your days began and caused the dawn to know its place? That it might take hold of the skirts of the earth and the wicked be shaken out of it. It's changed like clay under the seal and its features stand out like a garment from the wicked their light is withheld and their uplifted arm is broken. Have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth to clear if you know all this? Well this is what you want when your life is a wreck. When you go to the therapist because your life is falling apart you want them to ask you about creation. What's the implied answer here? Were you there? How would you answer that? You don't even need to say anything. You know you weren't there. I know you weren't there. Why would God start here? God is showing up. We want answers. We want God to give job answers. He'll never get an answer all the way through the end of the book. He's never going to learn why he went through this. He's never going to discover why. But instead now we have to deal with what do we hear? How is God talking to this man? Is God coming down? It is a whirlwind after all. Is he the father that's a go to your room? Is he the father that comes down and says where were you? I don't think so. I think he's more like a patient teacher engaging his broken beloved servant and asking him question after question about the cosmos. Where were you? I want to draw your attention to the cosmic temple I've built. He says of the sea the bible's image of hostility. He says I birthed the sea, put a diaper on it, burped it and threw it in its cage. You don't put a kid in a cage. crib. He says I did that with the sea. I put the most hostile thing in its place. I'm the power you can't fathom. Feels a little bullying. So here's the things God asked Job about for a long time. He just goes on and on asking Job questions. The cosmic temple, which we just read, the sea. Do you know about the morning, the light? The springs of the sea, the gates of death, light and darkness. Do you know about the snow? All these meteorological phenomena. That's what you want to talk about when you're suffering. Rain, ice and frost. Astronomy, have you seen all of the constellations? The bear and Orion, did you make them? Clouds and how they work. As a reader we're like, why are you asking him this stuff? Then he goes on this long series of questions about the lion, the raven, mountain goats, a wild donkey, a wild ox, an ostrich, a horse, a hawk and an eagle. And he asks Job about all of these in his darkest hour. The ostrich really has everyone puzzled. Like of all of the, and it's, he basically says, you know, he asks them like the mountain goat. Are you there when the mountain goat bears down and is about to deliver her young? Do you play a midwife for the mountain goat? I do. I love the mountain goats. Do you take care of the wild donkey? If you put a leash on it, how's that going to go? How about the ostrich? A stupid bird. I love those birds. God says, you don't know, but I know. The war horse. You know how powerful they are. I made him. I love him. He's drawing Job's attention to this wonder filled world around him that he paid attention to by the creator. Job's first response is, I heard about you. Now I've seen you. I've had enough. And God says, well, a couple more questions. And then he talks to him about Behemoth and Leviathan, which no one really knows what these creatures are. Best guess is like a hippopotamus with a dragon tail, or like an Leviathan, something like a crocodile, or maybe a blue whale. The point is they're monstrous, almost mythical, kinds of animals. He says, if you ever tried to put a leash on the crocodile on Leviathan, the chaos creatures, I take him for walks. Job wants answers for his sadness and loss, but what he sees and hears about is power. God's incredible, wise, creative power. And then in a turn, the most difficult verse is probably in the entire Hebrew Bible. It's not exactly clear what Job does. I think what Job does here is he says, I've had enough. I'm not going to speak like that anymore. I think that's what he says. But then now we are at the end. After all of this, the Lord had spoken these words to Job. The Lord said to Eliphaz, that's his friend, like the leader of the friends, my wrath is kindled against you and your two friends. You have not spoken of me what is right as my servant, Joe Bads. Isn't that crazy? Are you tracking with what just happened there? The Lord is angry, not at Job for all that stuff he said. You're a monster. You've hurt me. You mock me. You make the world a cruel place to live. All of that stuff. He's not mad at Job. After all that, he's not angry at Job. Who's he angry at? The church goers, right? Job's religious friends. Now here's the thing. If you go back and read everything the friends said, you're going to be doing a lot of this. Good point. That's true. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's a tight doctrine right there. They're spitting. They're saying all the truth, but with all the wrong application. And they don't quite get it. But they maintain and they make this suffering man. They make his life worse and worse and worse. With their, there's a silver lining in every cloud. God has a purpose for your pain. You should repent. I'm sure you did wrong. If you just turn back to God, he'll restore you. And Job says, I refuse to turn back to God. I didn't do anything wrong. And we as readers, he's right. He's right. If he, because at any point according to the friends, Job could have just said fine. I did something wrong. Give me my stuff back. But he doesn't do that. He holds his ground in the face of the whirlwind. And he says, I didn't do anything wrong. And God is mad at the friends. You and your dogmatism in your certainty about how you understand everything. Look what he goes on to say. This is nuts to me. Now therefore take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant, Job. And offer for yourselves a burnt offering. And my servant, Job, will pray for you. And I will accept his prayer. Look at this. This is what the Hebrew actually says. Not to act a fool with y'all. He's going to kill these guys. God is so angry he's going to kill them for what they've done. For you have not spoken of me what is right. But they have, but they haven't. See what's happening here? Righteousness before God is more than just pure doctrine. It's love. It's openness that things are bigger than you thought. You have not spoken as my servant, Job, has done. All of that hostile speech Job spoke to God. God doesn't say that was wrong. What in the world is going on? Not what we learn in Sunday school. God is going to kill Job's friends for how sure they are. And we as readers know Job is suffering for no reason. But look, he says to the friends, we can fix this. Go take an offering. I'll listen to Job. So Allah Fazatina might build that the shoe height. Zulfar the Na'amathite went and did what the Lord had told him. And the Lord accepted Job's prayer. And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job. The text actually says while he was sitting on the ash sheet. And he prayed for his friends and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Check this out. These guys have wronged Job for 38 chapters. Thrown their stuff at him about how the world works and who God is and how he's wrong and how he's failed. God is angry at them and he says, "I'll listen to Job." And before Job's sores disappear, we're never told he gets before any jobs come in, before he gets any property back, before the renovators are done rebuilding his home, before he gets that stuff back, while he's still on the ash heap. God, we have to imagine what is he saying in the prayer. Don't kill them. Don't be angry with them, right? Or any bells. Think for a minute. Yeah, yeah. This is the story of the Messiah, isn't it? The righteous sufferer suffering unfairly. God opens up within him a channel of his own mercy and forgiveness to flow out to those who made his life more miserable. God uses the unjust suffering of the righteous person to bring a blessing in his own mercy. There's a unique fellowship between the righteous person who says, "I won't let go. I won't admit I did something wrong." He holds on to God even though he's mad at God. God can take his anger, what God can take is lying about him, and Job doesn't lie. He doesn't deserve this. What we find here is when the righteous suffer, even though they have no answers, if they hold to God, God is doing something. This is the blueprint for the life of the church. This is what it means to be a person of God, to cling to God even when things are going wrong and we have no explanation. Job never gets an answer. Job never learns. And I don't think it would help if he did. I think it would probably make him more mad. This was an experiment. Come on. But he learns to cling to God. I'll close with this. I remember hearing a lecture from Carol Newson who did a lot of work on Job. She was a professor at Candler at Emory University. It was a sermon, actually, and she was describing her friend on the day of her daughter's funeral. And the friend could be nowhere to be found, and this funeral was about to start. And they went looking for her, and they found her in a back bedroom with the Bible open, reading God's speeches to Job. And later, she asked her, "Why were you reading those, what an odd passage to read at your daughter's wake?" And she responded, "I need to know that my pain isn't at the center of the world. I needed to know that even though I don't know why this is happening, that there is a God who tends for creation, tends to creation, and runs the world and is good. I needed to know that on this dark day. It has bigger than our pain. Even when we don't get answers, God uses it. Sometimes I think the dumbest thing we do is look for answers. The best thing we can do is maybe to say this hurts. But it doesn't take me a leap from this to move to the cross, right? Because now we're going to have the Lord suffer, and it's the same story again. And you can hear Job crying out to God, and you can hear the Messiah crying out. "My God, why have you abandoned me?" Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you work this way. Help us to trust you in the darkness. We're not owls. We can't see into the blackness of loss, but we can know you. And I pray we can know you in a way that holds to you, even in gray areas in life, where things aren't making sense. Help us, Father, to be good comforters, like the friends were on those first seven days for those going through it. The Father, we see in Job's life the story of Jesus. Jesus, we think of the cross, and I can't imagine a more vivid picture of a righteous person suffering though he doesn't deserve it. And yet you pray for us. Jesus, on the cross, you said, Father, they know not what they do, that you welcome us, that out of your suffering, as the song we sang earlier by your stripes were healed, out of your suffering comes salvation and mercy. We thank you for that, God. May we also be channels of your mercy in our dark hours. Thank you for this meal. May it strengthen us to be faithful to you, and it's in your son's name. Amen.
Inland Empire Church of Christ