The Way of wisdom 4: Job

Let's just jump into this story. I will read a good amount of scripture in the

beginning. I will go through this quickly. I won't belabor my points. I'll try not to.

But there's a lot to unpack in this story. We've got to kind of understand the

story to understand what it is that we are supposed to take out of it.

It starts in Job chapter one. Let's just dive in.

In the land of Uz, there lived a man whose name was Job.

This man was blameless and upright. He feared God and he shunned evil.

He had seven sons and three daughters.

And he owned 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 donkeys and

had a large number of servants.

He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.

His sons used to hold feasts in their home on their birthdays and they would

invite the three sisters to eat and drink with them.

And when a period of feasting had run his course, Job would make arrangements for them to be purified.

Early in the morning, he would sacrifice a burnt offering for each of them,

thinking, perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.

This was Job's regular custom. First, who is Job?

Who is Job? Was he a real person?

Doesn't matter. Who wrote it? Well, like so much of the Old Testament, we do not know.

He may have been a real person. There's a good chance that he was.

Or he may have been a literary figure.

More likely, even if he did exist, he's probably being used in a thought experience

to unpack a greater truth, his experience.

Kind of like if you ever remember the old story of John Henry.

He was a miner. He worked on the railroad, and he would pound in the spikes,

and he has this competition with the steam engine, breaking through the rock.

There's a song on, what was that? Schoolhouse Rock.

He didn't really do that. He was a real person, but his life is used to unpack a greater truth.

It doesn't really matter, though. Sometimes we get too lost in the details.

Often people have to argue that Job was a real person, often because they're

bringing a theological perspective to the story and they have to explain how

this could possibly have happened to a man under God's watch.

But it doesn't really matter who it was or if it was real or if it's simply

an instrument in a thought experience.

There's something for us to learn that the Holy Scriptures, that God by His

divine wisdom whispered, breathed through the Holy Spirit as intended for us

in this conversation of wisdom. Ooze, where was Ooze?

And I just gotta, just for quick, I'm just nerding out just for a second.

And Ooze is kind of mentioned in other books of the Bible. It's a place in the

East. There's not really a lot about it.

But it's probably, in this story, the ancient Hebrew equivalent to a land far, far away.

Job is not an Israelite, nor his friends that we are introduced to, these horrible people.

But the book is written for Israelites. But I believe that, and many scholars

believe that because of the setting and this is a land far, far away,

he's not an Israelite. He doesn't bring up the Torah. He doesn't bring up the Exodus.

Is kind of universalizing this thought that all creation is living in God's world.

And so this is a story. It used to be considered to be the oldest book in the

Bible. I told people for years, Job is the oldest book in the Bible.

But actually, it's very unlikely that it is anything except a very late addition to the Bible.

Because all through Job, there are many hyperlinks and direct references to

other passages in the Old Testament.

It's supposed to connect us to the Proverbs and to this story.

It doesn't matter. Maybe it's the oldest book in the Bible and the Holy Spirit

just divinely inspired these hyperlinks that later on were written. It doesn't matter.

But I just think it's probably not that old. I mean, it's still ancient.

But whoever wrote it had the Hebrew Bible in front of him.

And Job is the first book in the canon. Again, this is my last little bit of

nerd information. That is almost entirely poetry.

We see that in the Proverbs. We see that in the Psalms, which come after it

in the canon. We see it in Ecclesiastes.

But this is the first one that starts off with prose, a story that is beginning to be told.

And then the rest of this long book is Hebrew poetry, which means it's a very

actually stylized in the way it is written. the amount of words in each sentence,

the amount of sentences.

We don't get that in the English translation, but it is poetry.

It's beautiful. And in fact, there are some Hebrew words in the book of Job

that do not appear anywhere else in the Bible.

And why does that matter? I think it's because the writer is literally utilizing

every possible tool of communication that he has to unpack something that is

very important for us to grab a hold of.

And he's using all these words, all these phrases, all these ideologies,

all these analogies, all these pictures to connect us to a truth that we must

get to answer a question that we all have.

What is that question? I'll get to that.

And second, we are introduced to him in such a way that the reader is supposed

to place him in the exclusive category of people like Jonah and Abraham,

and it actually employs the exact same language, blameless and upright,

and feared God and turned from evil.

This does not mean that implying that Job was a morally perfect person that never made a mistake.

It is simply implying that he was someone who was unique in his steadfast fear of God.

He was a good dude. Job was a good dude in a land far, far away.

Even his sacrifices for his children, that some theological perspectives have

tried to import their view into that this was his sin. This is why all this happened.

But God himself says, as we'll see, that he was blameless.

This is the equivalent of a parent praying for his children,

who they know have to make their own decisions.

And Job knew in this day that even when people worshiped God in appearance and

with their bodies and with their habits and their hearts worship other gods.

And he's like, I don't know.

And so I'm going to worship. And God sees this as part of his blamelessness.

He thinks of himself and he thinks of his children and others.

He's a righteous man. He is a good dude.

So there once was a man named Job, was an exceptionally righteous man who lived

in a land far, far away and was the most wealthy and prosperous man in the land.

Job 1 verse 6. One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord,

Job 1:6

and Satan, the Satan, also came with them.

The Lord said to Satan, where have you come from? And Satan answered the Lord

from roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.

And the Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job?

There's no one on earth like him. He is blameless and upright,

a man who fears God and shuns evil.

Does Job fear God for nothing?

Satan replied, have you not put a hedge around him and his household and everything he has?

You have blessed the work of his hands so that the flocks and herds are spread throughout the land.

But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.

The Lord said to Satan, very well then, everything he has is in your power.

But on the man himself, do not lay a finger. And Satan went out from the presence

of the Lord. So weird, right?

Anybody with me there? First, I don't think that we're supposed to get lost

in trying to figure out the scene.

There is, in a few places in the scriptures, this reference to a divine council,

as scholarship has called it, where God, this term, the angels,

is actually the phrase sons of God, as we see in Genesis 6 and throughout the Bible.

It's referring to these other supernatural beings, non-earthly beings,

and it appears in certain passages of the scripture that God has this council,

that he governs the world, that just as he created us to govern the earth,

he's still God. I'm not saying he's not the boss. He's the president. He's the king.

He's the emperor supreme. dream, but he employs the help of these other people.

And you see in some of the prophets and Daniel and we see it in Isaiah,

we see these, these scenes, but I don't think the point of this book is to get

lost in the scene. I just think it's cool.

And it appears in the scene that he's simply posing the question as we,

let me just ask the question, who is the Satan?

Because every time in the Bible, in Hebrew and in Greek, I'm not here to blow your minds.

I'm not here to mess with all of your thoughts in theology, but the word Satan

is never a capitalized name.

It is the Satan in Hebrew and in Greek. And it literally simply means one who opposes.

It could mean somebody who accuses. It could mean somebody who prosecutes.

There are some people who think he was a prosecutor in God's cabinet.

I don't think it's quite that elaborate.

And here in this scene, we are not supposed to impose all of our later and medieval

and even New Testament ideas of this bad character who's on the scene to destroy God's humanity.

Maybe that's what it's for, but that is not indicated. And in fact,

that is now up until this point, how the Hebrews would have thought about the world and the cosmos.

There was chaos. There was the chaos monster. there was the chaos dragon in the garden.

But this character here in this book, in fact, even in the Old Testament,

the angel of the Lord is called the Satan, as he opposes Balaam.

In the New Testament, Jesus calls Peter, get behind me, Satan.

Because you are standing against my purposes.

And maybe this character is here to show us that everything that bad that happens

comes from the devil, but I do not believe that it is. And in fact,

it doesn't really give us that indication.

He's simply posing the question as one of God's agents.

But are humans truly righteous just because they have good stuff?

Is it possible that Job is only a God-fearing man because you've blessed him?

What would happen if you lost his stuff?

This is an important scene, not because it's teaching us about the council,

but because it introduces the fundamental question that Job begins to unpack

throughout this entire book and the question is not why does god allow suffering

though that sits within it the question is how does god rule the world.

And a greater, more detailed question, does God rule the cosmos,

this side of Eden, by the policy of just recompense?

In other words, does God rule the world simply by their justice?

Everybody gets what they deserve.

If you do this, you will have this. Is that how God entirely rules the cosmos?

Because if we think that way, and we could feel that way after reading Proverbs,

because it gives us many thoughts that if you follow wisdom,

you will have prosperity, you will have health.

If you follow folly, you will have destruction, you will have death and short life.

Even one of the Proverbs acknowledges that sometimes there will be pain.

If you follow wisdom, it says that pain will be short-lived.

Tremper Longman says that Job is a canonical corrective to this type of faulty

reasoning, that the Proverbs, that the scriptures, that the Torah is all just equations.

Everything in the Bible is just, as long as I do this, I get that.

And he says it is a canonical correction to this type of faulty reasoning.

It guards us against an over-reading of the covenant and of the book of the Proverbs.

It denies a mechanical application of the connection in Proverbs between wise

behavior, material rewards.

Certainly has some connection, but this book is there to tell us that life,

this side of Eden and this side of eternity, as Ecclesiastes has already told

us, does not always fit into neat packages.

In this book, where Ecclesiastes just sends it out to the cosmos,

life is random, we all die, time and chance marches on, this one introduces

a question, is how is God governing the universe?

And if bad things happen to good people, does it mean.

That they deserved it, or that God is not just.

And it does this by showing us a man who suffered for no reason of his own making.

Let's just go on. One day when Job's sons and daughters, this is after the Satan leaves.

And don't get me wrong, perhaps if you really need to hold on to that the Satan

was there to destroy Job, it's fine, it doesn't change the story.

This event in the heavens is not there to give us a clear understanding of suffering.

It is there to show us that there's mystery because Job never knows about this conversation. Never.

And so then the Satan leaves. And one day when Job's sons and daughters,

this is the longest piece that I'll read. So just take a minute.

It's not that long. I promise.

His sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house.

And a messenger comes to Job and says, the oxen were plowing and the donkeys

were grazing nearby and the Sabians attacked and made off with them.

They put the servants to the sword and I'm the only one who has escaped to tell you.

While he was still speaking, he's still talking. And another messenger comes

and says, the fire of God fell from the heavens and burned up the sheep and

the servants, and I'm the only one who has escaped to tell you.

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said,

the Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and they swept down on your camels and made off with them.

They put the servants to the sword and I'm the only one who has escaped to tell you.

While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said,

your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking some wine at the oldest brother's house.

And then suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four

corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are all dead.

And I'm the only one who has escaped to tell you. These only one people are very fortunate people.

At this, Job got up and tore his robe and he shaved his head.

Then he fell to the ground in worship.

And he said, naked I came from my mother's womb and naked I will depart.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised

In all this Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.

We can get caught up into the phrase, well, God didn't do it. Well, God allowed it.

But Job's heart was not that you were wrong, but that you are God.

And he falls to the face, his face, and he worships. There's another scene in

the heaven that follows. It starts out the same.

God gathers his counsel, and in comes the Satan with all of the other sons of God.

And God asks him again, what do you think of my servant Job?

None like him on all of the earth.

Blameless and fears me and shuns evil even

though you convinced me to strike him

and ruin him still he does not sin and then

the satan says this skin for skin a man

will give all he has for his own life but now stretch out your hand and strike

his flesh and bones and he will surely curse you to your face the lord said

to the satan very well then he is in your hands but you must spare his life

so the satan went out from the presence of the lord and afflicted job with painful

sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.

Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and he scraped himself with it.

As he sat among the ashes, this must be some form of ancient Near East grieving and lamenting.

His wife said to him, he said, he went and he sat amongst the ashes and his

wife said to him, are you still maintaining your integrity?

Curse God and die. And he replied, you're talking like a foolish woman.

Shall we accept good from God and not trouble.

In all this, Job did not sin in what he said. When Job's three friends,

Eliphaz, the Temanite, Bildad, the Shuhite, and Zophar, the name of that,

real quick, this is just a funny little affirmation, I got to say it.

When we were in India years ago, I was a teenager, and we had this guy with

us, he's preaching, good guy,

I won't say his name, because this was a really bad moment in his life.

And he's preaching, and he's trying to tell a joke, but you're preaching through an interpreter.

Just like the scriptures, you're trying to find ways to interpret what the person's

saying in English into your actual language.

And he tells his joke, who is the shortest man in the Bible?

And the guy, the interpreter gives the first part. And the punchline is, Bildad the Shuhite.

Didn't make any sense until it grew anyways. I just had to say that because

it reminded me of it, just this very moment.

Anyways, his friends come, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, the Nehemiah,

and they heard about all the troubles that had come upon him,

and they set out from their homes, and they met together by agreement to go

and sympathize with him and to comfort him.

They're coming to comfort him, and when they saw him from a distance,

they could hardly recognize him.

They began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes, and they sprinkled dust

on their heads, again, some kind of form of grieving. This is awful.

He doesn't even look like the Job that we know. This grief, this pain has changed him.

And he says, no one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was.

And he goes on to say, they sat with him for seven days in silence.

And this ends the prose.

The prologue of this story and begins this long, beautiful poetic book of poetry

where a man wrestles with wisdom in his suffering and in his pain,

wrestles with God in his very real pain, starts off in worship.

How can I accept anything from God except what he gives me?

But here in this moment, as anybody you know, anybody in this room,

as I've sat with people, as I've gone through things, as I sat with my best

friend, Stephen, the night his son died, you know that there's moments of,

but I'm just going to trust God, but then comes a raw emotion.

And this book deals with the way humans interact, the pain.

And this interaction with his wife, as it starts the poetry,

I've always seen, and I've even preached about it as this miserable example

of a wife, just curse God and die.

But that's not the case. Think about it for a minute.

Job is not alone in the story. He lost all of his children, all of his stuff.

Now his health, his wife has lost everything.

And this is the equivalent of saying we should just die.

Just curse God and die. This is a suicidal heartbroken woman.

And I think it's important to understand that because it kind of sets the tone

for the rest of what happens. She's not just a jerk.

She's in grief. And if he dies, she's left with nothing because she's lost everything.

This is her way of saying, let's just die.

Stop holding on to your integrity.

This must be your fault. So just curse God and die.

And it's followed by Job's three friends who come to comfort him in his grief.

Don't even recognize him. Begin to weep. They sit with him in silence for seven

days. And then Job finally speaks.

I won't read all of this first part, just the first seven verses.

I'm only going to read a few verses here and there from then on because it's

really a lot of repeating itself. But this is the first time Job speaks after seven days of silence.

And just a little spoiler alert, his friends should have kept their mouth shut.

Silence was what he needed.

In verse one of chapter three, after this, Job opened his mouth and he cursed the day of his birth.

He said, May the day of my birth perish, and the night that said, A boy has conceived.

That day may it turn to darkness. May God above not care about it. May no light shine on it.

May gloom and utter darkness claim it once more.

May clouds settle over it. May blackness overwhelm it.

The night may thick darkness seize it. May it not be included among the days

of the year, nor be entered in any of the months.

May that night be barren. May no shout of joy be heard in it.

Let that day cease to even be on the timeline. I wish it had never happened.

And it ends in verse 26 with, I have no peace, no quietness.

I have no rest, but only turmoil. As anybody who's suffered can relate to this

statement, I have no peace, only turmoil.

Here Job's friends also end their silence by bringing their own wisdom to the

conversation as they're outraged by the way he has spoken.

And they try to explain and reason out why Job has suffered.

I got another spoiler alert. If you think this book comes to the conclusion

and you leave completely understanding why there is suffering,

that's not what this book does.

So if you want to leave, don't, because there's a lot of good things to give them.

And here they bring in, they represent the best that wisdom has to offer in this conversation.

And this begins an exchange that lasts for 27 chapters.

And here in this exchange, his friends speak. First, Job speaks,

and they answer. Then they speak, and he answers.

His three friends speak, each one in turn. He answers, and this goes on for three rounds.

And here they're wrestling with these three statements that cannot all be true at the same time.

As they all wrestle with, why is he suffering? The first statement is, God is just.

The second statement is that the world is always governed by the law of just

recompense. In other words, just compensation.

The Proverbs tell us this. The world is governed by you get what you deserve.

And that's sometimes true. Some suffering is a result of sin.

Some suffering is a result of bad decisions.

But that's not what this book is dealing with. And so they're dealing with these

three questions. First, God is just.

The world is always governed by the law of just recompense. And then the third

statement is Job is innocent.

They cannot all be true at the

same time. And that is what these conversations are trying to conclude.

And Job's friends, beginning with Eliphaz, have concluded from the Proverbs

that if God is just, in these two statements, and that he always acts towards

humans through his justice, then the conclusion is what? Job is guilty.

Here's just two of the statements from his friends. Consider now,

Eliphaz, this is the first one, who being innocent has ever perished?

Where were the upright ever destroyed? As I have observed those who plow evil

and those who sow trouble, they reap it. At the breath of God, they perish.

At the blast of his anger, they are no more.

In Job 8, Bildad says, How long will you say such things? Because Job has just answered him.

Does the Almighty pervert justice? Does he pervert what is right?

When your children, he even brings his kids into it. When your children sinned

against him, he gave them over to the penalty of their sin.

They died because they were bad. This must have happened because there's something

wrong with you. God is just. The world is governed by God's justice alone.

Everybody gets what they deserve. This side of Eden, this side of eternity,

this is just how it is. Therefore, you must be guilty.

And Job answers over and over again.

That he is not guilty i will not concede i will maintain my innocence i've done nothing wrong,

it goes on again for three cycles back and forth and it gets mean in ancient

near east hebrew it's the equivalent of saying your mother.

But worse calls them names. They call him names as they're wrestling with suffering,

wrestling to figure out why this happened.

They bring their wisdom. Joe's comes to his own wisdom that if the world is

governed by just recompense and I am innocent, which I know to be true.

And we all know to be true because the book started out saying he did nothing

wrong. Even in the second angelic event.

God says, you enticed me to do this, though he did nothing wrong.

And so he concludes, the world is governed by justice, and I am innocent. Then God is not just.

He says in chapter 9, verse 21, although I am blameless, I have no concern for

myself. I despise my own life.

It's all the same. That is why I say he destroys both the blameless and the wicked.

When a scourge brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent.

When a land falls into the hands of the wicked, he blindfolds its judges.

If it is not he, then who is it?

Now we have to recognize the emotional rollercoaster that Job is on,

that is only being made worse by the wisdom of his friends.

He used to believe in God's justice, and he desperately wants to again.

You can see all kinds of contradiction in his words. It's where we get one of

those quoted on t-shirts and sketched into pillows that, I know my Redeemer

lives and I shall see him with my eyes.

But it's right in the middle of it. When I see him, I'm going to ask him what

the heck's wrong with him.

Did I do to deserve this? He's rollercoaster. He's on this emotional rollercoaster.

He's like, I don't understand. I want to believe, but I can't.

You're telling me I'm guilty, but I know I'm innocent.

And you're telling me that if this happened and God is just and the world is

only just, then you're saying I'm wrong. But I'm telling you that I did nothing wrong.

And if the world is just, then God cannot be just.

He's waffling back and forth and he finishes his last speech

and his friends who represent the best that wisdom of the ages has to say into

the situation they give up they don't concede it is like we're done in fact

the last account the third account the last guy's like i'm not even talking

this guy's not going to listen it's obvious this happened for a reason and he's the problem,

he's done and they've finished speaking another surprise guest shows up that

we have no idea where he come from he's overhearing you listening in but where

the three friends represent the age wisdom this is wisdom from ages his old

friends here comes this young guy named Elihu.

And he is long-winded he goes on for I can't remember I think it's like a nine

chapter I don't a lot of chapters, just talking.

This young man who brings his

new understanding and wisdom to the conversation. You all got it wrong.

He rebukes Job. How can you accuse God?

He rebukes his friends. You're not even able to defend God.

You're doing a terrible job defending God. In the end, though,

he basically echoes the same things. There's no new wisdom under the sun.

He does add his own new insight to it though the young insight

maybe you didn't do anything wrong

but god did this to you because of future sin

that's what he says or maybe he did this to just build character in your life

again that makes god just awful this is inviting us into the age-old reality

of human reasoning and the not so new question of suffering,

that has caused most people to choose one of these positions as we wrestle with

God, with each other in suffering or watching somebody suffer.

Again, we bring our own theological perspective. This has all happened because of this.

We think we can read Job and say, this is exactly what happened.

This is exactly why suffering happens.

I'm not talking about suffering caused by bad decisions. This is why earthquakes

happen. This is why sickness comes upon somebody.

And this is what it is. And you think, you know, this is my human reasoning.

And then you have the other side of the coin that says there's no way there's

any way that God can be good, that he would allow suffering.

There's no way. And if so many people wrestle with that, often it's people who

make no thought about God in their daily lives, but they see somebody suffer

and they got to find someone to blame. Well, it must be God.

Well, okay. There's so many opportunities to get it wrong.

And the point here, though, is that human wisdom will always fail.

It will always fall short of good answers.

And usually when they clash, as we see here, it brings chaos.

My opinion, your opinion. This is how we figure it out.

This is how we know. This is how we reason how this must be and why this must happen.

John Golden Gate says, sometimes we talk too much about God when we should be talking to him.

Why do I say that this is inviting us into this conversation?

Because the poem in 28, right in the middle of Job's last tirade, defending himself,

there comes this poem that says, people think that they have discovered all

kinds of wonderful things. He says they can mine.

They can discover diamonds and gold underground. They can dig deep.

They've innovated. Humans have innovated. They've become good at discovering,

but they can't find wisdom.

And he's read it in the beginning. And he goes on to say that the only place

that there's really wisdom is in God himself.

It's only found in God. And coming to the end, throughout the interaction,

Job continues to ask for an audience with God.

He continues to maintain his innocence.

He continues to wrestle with his own unbelief, not wanting to,

and all the while saying, just give me an interview.

In fact, in 23, he says, and Job replied, even today, my complaint is bitter.

His hand is heavy in spite of my groaning. If only I know where to find him,

if only I could go to his dwelling, I would state my case before him and fill

my mouth with arguments.

I would find out what he would answer me and consider what he would say to me.

Would he vigorously oppose me?

No, he would not press charges against me because he can't. I'm innocent.

There the upright can establish their innocence before him and there I would

be delivered forever from my judge.

Give me an interview. Let me challenge his decision over my life because I didn't

deserve it. So he was wrong.

God then proceeds to answer his request.

And it says that God comes in a whirlwind.

In verse 38, chapter 38, verse 1, And the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm.

He said, Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?

Brace yourself like a man, and I will question you, and you shall answer me.

God then proceeds to ask Job a series of impossibly answerable questions.

77 to be exact.

God never tells Job. You want to know why? This is why it happened.

He never says why he suffered.

Instead, he shows Job the vastness of the universe.

First, he takes him on a virtual tour of all of the cosmos, asking him,

were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Did you help me set the constellation on their path. You weren't even alive.

He asked them all these complicated questions about the universe and time and

the sun. Can you make the sun rise?

Were you there who created a boundary for darkness? Were you there?

Did you create a boundary for the chaos of the ocean? Was that you? Were you there?

And then he goes into the earth that Job lives in and asks him questions that he could relate to.

Can you make the sun rise as I already said? Can you understand the feeding

patterns of lions have you ever watched a mountain goat give birth the ass and

all kinds of weird questions and now in our enlightened science we can answer

a lot of those questions the point was joe couldn't and there's plenty of questions

we couldn't as well that's,

you understand how the hawk takes flight? Do you know how the eagle soars on the currents of the air?

Do you have any idea how any of that works?

Job has limited vantage point to make his assumptions is what God is trying to say.

You're making your conclusions about me from where you stand here.

You can only see what you've experienced and what you can understand with your eyes.

But God has a vantage point. He says, I have a vantage point that you nor your

friends could ever understand.

The universe is vast and complex and I have eyes on all of it.

He's not just saying, do you see all this?

He's saying, I know it all. I watch it all. I see it all.

You just see you. I see you too while I'm seeing everything.

And you're making your assumptions about me based on your limited vantage point.

After the virtual tour, God asked Job, how would you like to run the universe

according to your understanding of how it should work?

How about you take your logic, your friends take their logic that everything

has to be just recompense. You go and you govern.

You decide who to destroy and who not to destroy.

The end result would be shaking all of humanity off the rug of the cosmos,

because no one would stand.

Go ahead and carry out justice on every human being according to their actions.

The point is, carrying out justice in a world like ours is very complex.

God's justice is beyond our understanding. It's never black and white,

like Job and his friends seem to think.

Which leads to God's last point. He begins to describe these two fantastic creatures.

Behemoth or behemoth, whatever you want to say. How do you pronounce that?

Behemoth. And Leviathan. Some think it's a poetic description of a hippo and

a crocodile, but it's more likely they refer because they're giant,

that they refer to well-known creatures from ancient Near Eastern mythology

that are used elsewhere in the Bible.

We see these two used in the Bible as symbols for the disorder and the danger

that still exists in God's world.

You should read it. It's cool. Have you ever thought about this behemoth?

Can you tame? What about Leviathan? He's describing a dragon.

Fire comes from him. In an ancient mythology, it says that things couldn't,

and even in the Bible, that weapons couldn't pierce his hide.

Can you go and tame him and put a leash on him? Can you bring him home and make him a pet? I can.

I know about him. I can come and stand in his face. Can you?

Again, the point is, these creatures are not evil, but they're not safe either.

And God's saying, God's world is amazing and it is good, but not perfect.

It is order and it is beauty, but it is also wild and dangerous.

The reality is you think you can govern all of this.

The world, this side of Eden, this side of eternity is, well,

as we look at Jesus, it is beautiful.

God is limiting the boundaries of darkness from overtaking it,

but the world is still wild. It is still dangerous.

There are things outside of our control.

And so this comes back to the question, why is there suffering in the world.

Either from earthquakes, sickness, wild animals, or people?

God doesn't explain why, but he does say is, we live in an amazing,

extremely complex world that at this stage at least is not designed to prevent suffering.

It's just the nature of our broken world. Things happen.

But why couldn't you stop everything? And again, God says, you stop everything.

God governs by his wisdom, not simply by justice.

His justice is part of his wisdom. But he says, I am the only one with wisdom.

I am holding it all together." Chapter Longman says God isn't defending himself,

but he is inviting Job into wonder. Look at who I am.

Golden Gate says, God doesn't tell Job what happened, but he gives Job himself.

This is not a rebuke on Job.

He's saying, you're trying to understand things beyond you, and I cannot give

you the answers because they'll never make sense to you.

They're things you can't understand, but I can reveal myself to you.

Job wanted answers, but he was met instead with encounter of the living God.

And of course, his response is humility.

Job 42 says, Job replied to the

lord i know that you can do all things no purpose

of yours can be thwarted you asked who is that obscures

my plans without knowledge surely i spoke of things that i

do not understand things too wonderful for me

to know and you said listen now and i will speak and i will question you and

you shall answer me my ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you therefore

i despise myself and repent in the dust and ashes job is not repenting of sin

he's repenting of trying to fit God into his box.

And here we see that Job's faith is deepened, not because he understands,

but because he encounters God.

There are some aspects of God that we will never see unless we have suffered.

Now my eyes have seen you. Wow, that's just ridiculous.

I'm telling you, there are aspects of God's nature, of his goodness,

of his faithfulness, of his kindness and his compassion that you cannot actually

see until you have suffered.

And I hope that you don't suffer.

But even in the Lord's prayer, we bring it to the New Testament for a moment.

Your will be done on the earth as it is in heaven. Give us a day our daily bread.

Lead us not into the test.

And most translations say, and deliver me from evil. But that word and also

can mean but. And most scholars think it means but deliver me from evil.

Even if I have to go through a test. Keep me from being destroyed.

Moved from asking why to trusting who. And that's what God is trying to show

him, not just trying to belittle him. You're such an idiot.

He's saying, look at what I have to do.

Look who I am. I am not overwhelmed by this task, but I am the only one who can do it.

And I am the one who is here with you today.

And Job moves from asking why. God is saying, I can't tell you why,

but I can ask you to trust me.

When we are suffering, we might want answers, but we just need God.

I'm sorry if you wanted to need answer. And God tells Job's friends,

he's angry with them because they have spoken wrongly about him.

But he says, but Job has spoken truthfully.

Now, obviously not everything Job said about God was right.

But this book, as human beings, as wisdom literature, it invites us to wrestle

with God in the middle of our pain.

He says he did nothing wrong, even as he's berating me and blaming me.

This is a process of human grief. He's wrestling with me.

This book actually invites us into wrestling with God in our pain,

but it invites us to wrestle with him, not with ourselves, not with our pain,

not with others. He says, bring it to me.

He would rather our honest anger than our reasoning and explanations or our polite silence.

If you're in the middle of suffering, God invites your honest anger.

He says, bring it to me. Then God then tells us.

Tells his friends that Job is now going to offer sacrifices for your whore.

Wrong. He's going to offer prayers to intercede on your behalf.

And he says, and I will hear his prayers. He's going to pray for you now.

He's the one that you came to come for, and now he's going to pray for you,

and I'm going to hear his prayers.

And that says in the very end of this discourse, again, I'm coming to the conclusion, I promise.

After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes,

and gave him twice as much as he had before." How do we see Job,

though, in the light of Christ? What do we take from it?

Just that suffering is going to happen and we're going to have to be okay with

it? I mean, partially, but that's not what we're supposed to take from this book.

Job's story points towards Jesus, the innocent sufferer who also cried, Why God?

Jesus is the true Job. Crushed unjustly, yet perfectly faithful.

He knows the silence of Saturday and the storm of Friday.

The cross is God's answer to Job. Not an explanation, but an identification.

God doesn't stand above our suffering. He steps into it.

At the cross, the wisdom of God looks like foolishness. Love triumphing through

pain, through suffering.

Tim Mackey of the Bible Project says, the wisdom of the cross invites us to

trust God's goodness when life still feels unjust.

Jesus, as he's preparing to do what he has to do, and his last discourse with

his disciples, and he's warning them, you're going to suffer. I'm about to suffer.

You're about to experience something that you're not going to understand.

But he says this, do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, but leave also in me.

It's going to be weird. It's going to be unpredictable. You're not going to understand it.

But trust me, Jesus entered in and took upon himself all of this.

This book has helped me understand the reality of Christ's work and the last

days of his life and atonement theories is now all of a sudden has a new light

because Jesus entered in to our broken world,

took upon himself all of the suffering of broken humanity.

And in his suffering, interceded for the whole world.

And God heard him, just like Job. The cross is where wisdom and mystery meet.

And resurrection is a declaration that every storm will one day still.

The cross is God coming into our suffering,

experiencing taking all of it upon himself and unfortunately even the new testament

doesn't tell us that it makes us exempt from it but the resurrection brings

us to the place the promise that all suffering will end.

Emmanuel, God with us. When God says, when Jesus says, you can do this,

you can get through this, he's not speaking as one who hasn't experienced the

worst that a human can experience.

He says, I came into your pain. I experienced it. I felt it.

I took upon myself. I took away its power to destroy you.

And in my resurrection, I've connected you to a new reality that all of this will someday be fixed.

But here's the thing. We're not just invited to see Jesus in Job.

We are invited to become like Jesus in our suffering.

The New Testament is filled with scriptures of suffering with Christ.

And it's not just suffering for being a Christian.

It's about standing in the place of pain that all the world is experiencing.

When we suffer, there's something about the intercession of the righteous sufferer

that I've learned from Job, that I've learned as I've watched certain people

watch my wife go through an illness that crippled her in pain.

When we see God in our pain, we all of a sudden have a new vantage point for

prayer for others that we never had before.

There's something about the intercession of the righteous sufferer.

When something has happened to us that has nothing to do with anything that we did.

Because this book tells us that suffering is not a result. Sometimes,

the Proverbs tells us, sometimes it is.

You get killed stumbling around drunk because you drank too much. That's your fault.

You inject too much drugs into your veins. That's your fault.

You eat too much McDonald's and you die of a heart attack.

I'm praying that doesn't happen to me. I'm praying God intervenes.

But there's something about the righteous sufferer and his intercession.

Real cool side note that most translations, like I just read,

they say after he prayed for his friends, after he interceded for his friends,

his fortunes were restored in double.

But the actual literal translation in the Hebrew is while he was praying for

his friends, his fortunes were restored.

We have a hope because of the resurrection that connects us to a future where

suffering is eradicated and restoration is guaranteed.

And there is a connection to that revelation when we intervene like Christ and

we pray in our suffering.

We may not get double what we lost this side of eternity, but the closer we

come to God in our pain, the more vivid our future becomes in our imaginations,

and it is more than double what we lost.

Our suffering, we're invited, like Christ, into hope this will end.

You may get in your lifetime double what you lost, but that ceases to matter

in the middle of your pain when you're seeing God face to face like you've never seen Him before,

and you're acutely aware of the pain around you and infinitely aware of the

reality that the God who's with you now is inviting you into a future,

of eternal blessing.

Romans 8, 18, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing

with the glory that will be revealed in us.

You see, the early church, they had this kind of tenacity that we don't understand in the West.

I hope to not have to, because I hope my life is never threatened because I'm a believer.

But they had this tenacity. It doesn't matter what happens to me.

I know my future.

Romans 8 goes on to say, we know that the whole creation, and I've read this

a ton of times, but I'm reading it in this story again because I love it.

This is my last scripture. We know that the whole creation has been groaning

as in the pains of childbirth up to the present time.

The creation, the world is in pain. It's broken. It's beautiful, but it's wild.

Goodness, and there's so much brokenness. And then he says, not only so, but we ourselves,

who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we also groan inwardly as we await

eagerly for our adoptions to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.

We await eagerly, even we groan as we wait for the day when all of this is made right.

For in this hope we were saved. The hope that is seen is not hope at all.

Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet

have. We wait for it patiently.

There's something about suffering that brings me to a place of hope like nothing else.

And again, I'm not saying, just like the Lord's Prayer when I pray in the morning,

because I pray it every day, I say, don't lead me into the test.

Don't test me. But if you do, if I am tested, whether you've led me in it or

life has led me in it, keep me from the evil one, the chaos dragon that will use us to destroy me.

Hold me into the moment when all is made right. How do we practice Job's wisdom?

We have to learn to lament honestly. There's nothing. Sometimes we feel in some traditions,

even in our own tradition at times, that speaking negatively

about our situation is going to somehow make it worse but

this book invites us to be honest and raw learn how

to lament the old testament the new testament it

is filled with lament jesus in

the garden before he did what he had to do he's kneeling

beside job saying god if there's any way

this doesn't have to happen but your will be done

not mine learn to lament honestly bring god your complaint before you bring

him your conclusion Job's lament wasn't disobedience It was devotion in the

dark I can't see you I'm angry with you But I'm coming to you.

The storm is not judgment, but revelation. Listen for the whirlwind.

God still speaks through creations, through scripture, through community, and through silence.

Practice. Spend 10 minutes this week outside, no phone, no noise,

just noticing God's world and your smallness in it, and that the one who orchestrated

all this and holds it together is walking with me.

We can learn to be a presence and not a fix. I think Job's friends teach us

sometimes we need to keep our mouths shut.

We don't need to tell people sometimes what the Bible says.

We just need to sit with them sometimes in their pain, quietly, not trying to fix it.

When others suffer, wisdom doesn't rush to fix it. It sits, it weeps, it stays.

Golden Gate says, God never rebukes Job for lament but he does rebuke the friends

for trying to explain it practice it this week reach out to someone that you

know that is suffering if you know anyone who's suffering offer your presence

to them don't call them unless it's a scripture that says you are so loved.

Call them go get them a cup of coffee sit with them and sit across from them

i sat across from my friend Ben at dinner or lunch, who's going through suffering

that he had nothing to do with.

You know what I say? Ben, this sucks. I'm sorry. I'm here with you.

I'm not going to tell you you're wrong to feel the way you feel.

I'm not going to tell you, just get over it. God's going to turn it into something beautiful.

Even if that's true, in that moment, he needs me to sit and say, Ben, I'm sorry.

Worship without why. Job worshiped before and after the pain.

True worship isn't built on outcomes. It's built on trust.

I worship you because you are God, not because of the way you've answered my

prayers, but because you are the only one who answers prayer.

I need you, not an outcome.

Practice worshiping this week through one unanswered question that you have.

Let that moment become your altar i have some god i'm believing for this to

change but i'm not going to reason out i'm not going to weaponize the scriptures

against you and say well this is supposed to happen i'm simply going to sit

and say god show me your face i worship you in my,

questions and my disappointments let me stand to our feet this morning so to

wrap up the whole conversation of wisdom.

Job brings us right back to where Proverbs began.

Proverbs invites us to live wisely in God's world in the fear and reverence

and awareness and awe of the Lord.

Because when you come to the end of Job, that's all you can do.

You're God. All I can do is live my life according to the wisdom that I can

understand that you've given me.

Ecclesiastes He tells us that in the randomness of life, the march of time,

and the reality that we're all going to die, that it is wisdom to fear the Lord

and find meaning by living to see God's beauty in the only time that I have today.

I'm going to walk wisely the best that I can because that's the way to move in your rhythm.

To live each day looking for your beauty.

And then Job reminds us that wisdom as humans is limited. But no matter what

we experience, we can trust the one who has all wisdom and who will,

by his wisdom and by his justice, make everything right.

Where in your life do you feel like Job, questioning, aching, waiting?

Can you believe that God's presence is deeper than his explanations.

Reveal yourself in our suffering not just to us but through us through Jesus

our suffering Savior we pray Amen.