Wisdom Lit - The Objecting Job

I need everybody to locate the closest box of Kleenex.

Make sure you know how to get to it.

Because I might run out.

No joke, I was texting people this morning.

Pray for me, because this one...

I cried so much writing this sermon.

Maybe they all got out.

Maybe I'll just...

Maybe it won't affect me at all as I'm preaching it right now.

That happens sometimes where I'll be super emotional as I'm writing it.

And then I get up here and it's just clear as day.

But this one...

I was driving here this morning just thinking about the sermon.

Like...

Trying to hold it together.

For those of you who have not met me before, my name is Crying Greg.

If we have not met, I would love to meet you.

Maybe buy you a coffee, chat about life, talk about Jesus, if that's something you would like to do.

We are in our fifth week of our series on wisdom literature.

There are different categories of scripture, of different kinds of writing throughout the Bible.

And one of those is called wisdom literature.

And so we have covered a handful of those places.

Now so far the Psalms, some of the words of Jesus, the Proverbs, last week Ecclesiastes.

And today we look at the book of Job.

Job is unlike any other book in the scriptures.

We don't really know when it happened.

We think that it was written sometime after Solomon.

But the context clues inside of the book of Job tell us more.

Things like that it probably wasn't from that era.

Things like that wealth is measured by how many cattle someone had.

So what happens is that that ends up putting the dating of the story in the book closer to the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

A thousand years before the story was ever actually written down.

If you're keeping track, that's four thousand years ago for us.

And then scholars generally agree that Job wasn't an Israelite.

That's unique.

To have an entire book in the Bible that's dedicated to someone that probably wasn't Jewish.

And they think that obviously partly because of the timing.

If this was happening around the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we know the names of all his immediate descendants.

And so we can assume that this is not someone that was immediately related to any of those three.

And that reminds us that God is known by other people.

God is known by other people.

God is known by people that we've never heard of.

And then even if it happened later, later than what we think it did, they don't think that he's an Israelite because of where the story happened.

Chapter one says that Job lived in the land of Uz in the east.

No one really knows where that is.

It's not like Nineveh. It's not like Bethel. It's not like Jericho.

Uz is a region that is lost to history.

So this story is unique.

And then there's the composition of Job.

The book of Job changed over the years like many of the books of the Bible did.

Some versions we have found have smaller changes.

Some are missing 400 lines from version to version.

And then some scholars believe that Job originally was only three chapters long.

The first two chapters and the last chapter.

For those of you that are wondering, the version we have now is 42 chapters long.

One of the reasons that they think that this is possible about the composition is that chapter one and two and 42 are considered what's called prose.

It's narration.

But the 39 chapters between are almost completely made up of poetry.

Seven voices in the book of Job, including God and a narrator.

Seven voices in those 39 chapters speak.

The narrator speaks only a few times for a few verses here and there.

The other six voices for those 39 chapters speak exclusively in poetry.

Imagine having four friends obsessed with Shakespeare.

And no matter what you're talking about, they will only speak with a Shakespearean iambic-tameter.

Pentameter, I should say.

Andy, I felt your presence back there and then I flubbed the words.

Andy loves Shakespeare.

Imagine pleading your case with God and having to do so in poetry because apparently that's all that God speaks in.

Imagine having to defend yourself against your friends but having to come up with a poetic way of saying it because they're coming at you with Chaucer.

It's just not how anyone has ever had a conversation for that period of a time, even 4,000 years ago.

It's not saying that no parts of this conversation happened.

It's saying that somewhere along the way, any conversations that did happen were surely rewritten into poetry as tradition grew, as their theological understanding of God developed.

Okay, so we don't know when it happened.

We don't really know where it happened and we're not sure that all of it happened.

This is a good time to remind us that in the Bible, some things don't have to be historically accurate to teach us something that's true.

I want you to think of Jesus.

Across the Gospels, a third of everything Jesus taught was in parable.

Parables are stories that literally did not happen and yet they are true.

In that way, Job doesn't have to be a history book to learn something that is true.

Allegory and poetry have their place in the Bible.

So the next question isn't when or where.

It's the angel question of why do bad things happen to good people?

And what does it say about God when they do?

Some will use Paul's passage, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, to say that no one is truly good.

But that's not the description that we get of Job.

There is no way around it if you read the book of Job.

Job was a good person.

In chapter one, Job is described as the greatest of all people in the East.

He's described as wise, righteous, God-fearing.

And that doesn't mean that he cowers at the thought of God.

That's not what we mean when we say the fear of God.

We're talking about someone that follows closely after what they believe God has said their life should be.

That they follow closely and let what God has said shape their life, to shape everything that they did.

And that's exactly what Job did.

His fear for God shaped his business, it shaped his family, it shaped everything.

He was the father of ten children.

It says that he would not only make sacrifices to purify himself, but he would regularly sanctify his children, just in case they had sinned against God.

Job was good with a capital G-O-O-D.

But then, Satan.

If you read Job, it says that Satan was talking to God.

We don't exactly know why.

And he says, surely Job is only good because you have blessed him.

Surely he's only good because you protect him.

So then Satan set out to afflict him, to try and force him to reject God.

All of his cattle, dead.

His businesses destroyed, demolished, his servants killed.

All of his wealth, gone.

His ten children, dead in a freak accident.

Then his body was covered with sores and boils.

Some of us have borne the weight of sorrow.

Few, or maybe none of us, have ever had this kind of tragedy happen all at once.

And in the midst of Job's sorrow and pain, his spouse told him that he should just curse God and die.

The only three friends that showed up lecture him eight different times about how he must be hiding some sin.

He must be guilty.

God doesn't allow such calamity without fault.

Job, having lost absolutely everything, surrounded by friends, found himself completely alone.

He had no one on his side.

And then God spoke up.

At first, if you read it, God chides Job for thinking that he knows more about God than he actually does.

But then something fascinating happens.

God says, you're right.

You didn't sin. This isn't your fault.

How many of us have been waiting to hear God say that to us?

And then God turns to Job's friends, the friends that should have been comforting him, and he rebukes them.

He says, my wrath is kindled against you, for you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has.

The book ends with God making his friends share their wealth with him.

And then he gives Job a new family and twice the wealth that he had before.

Now, the most generic lesson that people try to teach from the book of Job is that if you just keep the faith,

God will reward you with double.

That is not what Job is teaching us.

I think that that lesson, the desire for us to learn that lesson is the reason that we need 39 chapters of poetry in between the beginning and the end.

Because the lesson you get if you just read the beginning and the end, all you see is him losing everything, staying faithful, and then being rewarded.

It's in the poetry that we see the point.

But let me come back to that.

For those of you that are a bit more familiar with the book of Job, you may have already noticed that I left something pretty big out.

I left it out because I think that if Job were to be written today, for the very first time, that it would probably be written a little bit more like an M. Night Shyamalan movie,

where the twist at the end changes the rest of the movie and the rest of the way that you saw everything else that you read.

See, because the twist isn't that God told Job that he didn't do anything wrong and then rebuked his friends.

That feels like a twist, doesn't it? It's not the twist.

Because we knew that Job was innocent all along, didn't we? Yes?

The twist is the flashback to the beginning.

The twist is the flashback to why Satan knew who Job was in the first place.

Because it wasn't Satan that noticed Job.

It was God that asked Satan if he had noticed him.

When Satan tells God that Job would reject him if it wasn't for his blessings, Satan didn't just run off and afflict him.

Chapter 1 verse 12 says, God said to Satan, very well then everything he has is in your power.

Chapter 2 verse 6, he says, very well, he is in your hands.

The twist is that while Satan did the dirty work, God put him up to it.

There are illusions in other parts of the Bible that Satan wants to harm us.

Revelation speaks of the devil imprisoning believers in 2 Corinthians.

Paul calls the metaphorical thorn that it's in inside, he calls it a messenger from Satan.

In Luke 22, Jesus tells Peter, he says, Satan has asked to test you, but I am praying for you.

It's a generally accepted biblical idea that Satan does not like us.

But Job is different. Remember I told you the book is unique.

Because Job seems to be the only place where God points out the target and then gives Satan explicit freedom to hurt him.

So what's the lesson? Be good and God will let Satan hurt you anyway?

Be good and he might instigate your pain.

This is what God is really like. That should disturb you.

Because if anyone else did this, we would call it cruel.

If anyone did this, they would be held responsible. We would object.

Now, listen, very carefully, that is the point.

The point is that we should object.

The point is that God can be questioned, should be questioned.

Job, over and over and over again, didn't just ask why is this happening, he questioned God.

And this is why Job is rewarded, not because he remained faithful, but because he asked the questions.

He asked questions where his friends did not.

And that's why it's in the poetry that we see the point. Because it's in Job's poetry that we see the human heart confronting the infinite for justice.

Job cared for the poor. If you read throughout the poetry, if you read throughout the entire book, you see how it's described how he was someone that cared for his neighbor, cared for the poor, cared for those that were around him.

He didn't help, he helped. He protected his children, but God didn't?

He helped his neighbors, but God didn't help him?

Job was nothing but faithful to God? Why then has God not been faithful to him?

It's in the poetry that we see the cry for justice. It's in the poetry that we see that we learn that if you are not willing to question God about why something happened to you, how will you learn to object when you see injustice happen to someone else?

If you will not object when something happens to you, why would you object when something happens to someone else?

We are not supposed to walk away thinking that we will be rewarded if we just don't lose our faith.

We're supposed to walk away knowing that it is the one that questioned God that in the end was validated by God.

Everyone else told Job to shut up. You can't say that. You must be wrong. How dare you?

Those people were rebuked by God.

God says to them, you have not spoken to me what is right like Job did.

And what is it that Job said that was right?

These are his words.

Why did I not perish at birth and die as I came from the womb?

Why was I born in the first place if this is what you had planned for me?

720. If I have sinned, why have I, what have I done to you? You see everything we do. Why have you made me your target?

Have I become a burden to you? Job 10.3. Does it please you to oppress me?

He's asking God this. Does it please you to oppress me, to spurn the work of your hands while you smile on the plans of the wicked?

Job is literally accusing God of having more favor on the wicked than he has on his own follower.

Job 13. He says, why do you hide your face and consider me your enemy? Show me my offense. Show me my sin.

Job, the only one that had enough guts to question the great and powerful God is the hero of this story.

Not because I say so, because God said so.

God says he's the only one that spoke correctly about me.

Some of the things he said are things that some of us would be terrified to say.

Because we've been told that God can't handle it.

Because Job was wise enough to object.

That's why this is wisdom literature.

Job is wisdom literature because he was wise enough to object.

And the wisdom of God was to acknowledge that of all the voices in this book, Job's is the voice that everyone should have been listening to.

The question that comes to us is will we have the voice of Job or will we have the voice of the friends?

Will we see affliction and when we tell them that we're with them, will we really be with them or will we be telling them you must have done something wrong?

I want to read you a conversation that I saw.

I have not paraphrased. I'm reading the exchange verbatim.

It's like this.

Terrible things are happening outside.

At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes.

They're allowed to take only a knapsack and a little cash with them and even then they're robbed of these possessions on the way.

Families are torn apart. Men, women and children are separated.

Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.

Women return from shopping to find their houses sealed, their families gone.

Someone replied, yes, it's a consequence of uncontrolled borders.

It is to be expected. Grow a backbone. It's what we voted for.

Sometimes with a democracy you have to lose and suck it up.

A state has to control its borders.

The original poster replied.

Buddy, that's a quote from Anne Frank describing the Nazis.

There are challenges all around us that we want to blame them for.

There are people that are experiencing the greatest trials of their life and we're telling them it's your fault.

You must have done something.

For some many of us, it doesn't really affect us.

We can sit by our friend and say, it'll be fine. Just repent.

But God was pleased with the obstinate, objecting voice of Job.

We all have a choice.

The question is whether we will see the point in the poetry.

Whether we will see that compassion, empathy, mercy

is the language of God.

Because some of us may not be affected by anything that's happening in the world.

But maybe God will put a friend in your life that is.

Let me tell you the best thing that these three friends did.

If you go back and read it for yourself, it says that after Job had been suffering,

that these three friends showed up. They were from three different places.

And it says that for seven days they sat in silence.

If you cannot understand, if you cannot speak with compassion, then do not speak at all.

And if you must speak, then object to the pain that they are experiencing.

And call on God to do something different.

Will you pray with me?

Oh God, I am broken.

From the outside, if anyone just sees my life, I have a job, I have family, children and a house.

I am safe. I am just fine. I am okay.

But my brothers, my sisters, my neighbors are not.

And I object.

I do not have poetic words.

But I object.

God, can your hand not stretch out to them as well?

How long will they suffer?

Let your spirit come in comfort.

Let us know your goodness.

Let us hear your voice.

Coming in and in whatever way that you need to correct us, we receive your correction.

But hear us objecting to the pain.

Hear us calling on you to do a good work.

Amen.