This evening we are diving into the story of Job. We\u2019ve had two readings from the book of Job, but actually we are going to take the opportunity to look at the whole of the book. Even for one of our longer, Dive, sermons, this is quite an undertaking, and we\u2019re not going to be able to cover everything, but as I was looking at these two passages it didn\u2019t really seem possible to address them without looking at the whole book, so that\u2019s what we\u2019re going to do. <\/p>\n
Last weekend was the CAP quiz. I found myself in an impromptu team with Liz, Margaret Watkins, and Alwyn and Trevis Jones. There were lots of questions in this quiz, as you\u2019d expect, over a wide variety of topics. We didn\u2019t do too badly, some rounds went really well, some very badly. In the past I fear that I\u2019ve not always been a good person to have on a quiz team. You see, I\u2019m not very good at admitting that I don\u2019t know something or that I\u2019m wrong about something, so if I think I know the answer, even if I\u2019m not very sure, I can sound quite sure and sometimes talk other people out of the right answer, when they do know but aren\u2019t as confident as I am.
\nI think I\u2019ve just about curbed these tendencies, but I know that they\u2019re still there. \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d can be one of the hardest things to say. <\/p>\n
The book of Job is all about questions. So, let\u2019s start off by thinking about questions. I\u2019d like to suggest that there are a number of different types of question:<\/p>\n
Question seeking information: Where is my book?
\nRhetorical question: Answer already known, doesn\u2019t expect a response, asked to make a point: \u201cDo you know how long it took me to make this meal?\u201d
\nImpossible question: A type of rhetorical question asked to heighten awareness of someone\u2019s limits: Can you wind the clock back?
\nExistential question: Again, not meant to be answered, or at least, not quickly, but the asking of them provokes exploration and enquiry. \u201cWho am I?\u201d is perhaps the simplest of these. <\/p>\n
The questions in the quiz were all information seeking questions. Very few of the many questions in Job are like this. They are rhetorical questions, designed to provoke thought.
\nBehind all the questions that we find in Job are, it seems to me, two sets of existential questions.<\/p>\n
The first set is from the human side:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy is there suffering\u201d
\n\u201cWhy do innocent people suffer\u201d
\n\u201cWhy do I suffer\u201d
\n\u201cHow am I meant to react to suffering\u201d
\n\u201cWhat is God like?\u201d<\/p>\n
The second set is from God\u2019s side:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are people pious?\u201d
\n\u201cWhy do people do religious things \u2013 live well, pray, worship?\u201d
\n\u201cIs it possible for people to love and worship me, apart from any belief in a benefit they might get?\u201d<\/p>\n
Before we dive into looking at these questions, and how the book addresses them, let\u2019s take a bit of a step back for an overview.<\/p>\n
The book of Job was probably written sometime between 700 and 200 years before Christ. It is likely that there was an older folk tale about Job that provided the outline of the story, which was incorporated into the book we have today. The book is made up of three sections. The first two chapters, in prose, introduce the main characters, and the bulk of the action of the story. The next 39 chapters present, in poetry, the speeches of Job, his friends, and God. The final chapter details Job\u2019s final response to God, and, again in prose, the conclusion of the story. <\/p>\n
The book begins, \u201cIn the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job.\u201d This is the Biblical equivalent of, \u201cA long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.\u201d Or \u201cOnce upon a time…\u201d There is no intent here that this should be read as a historical account of a man who actually lived. As Jesus used parables without always saying, \u201cThis next story is a parable\u201d, but expected people to understand that from the context, and the way he told the story, so the writer here is using a form that communicates that this is a story that has much to teach us, but is not a historical account. <\/p>\n
So, we\u2019re not sure who wrote this book, or when, or much about its setting. There is one other thing that I want to mention. The Hebrew that it is written in is unusual, unlike the Hebrew of the rest of the Bible. Some commentators would even go as far as saying that it comes from a distinct Hebrew dialect. There are a number of words that only appear in the Bible in Job. There are more words influenced by or borrowed from Aramaic. At points the best copies of the text that we have don\u2019t make complete sense, and translators have to reconstruct what they think the original probably said. <\/p>\n
I say this with some hesitancy, because I don\u2019t want to suggest that the Bible in general is unreliable, or sow seeds of doubt about the reliability of the Bible as we have it. I do so, however, because it seems to me that being honest about the very few places where we aren\u2019t sure what the original authors wrote, makes it more credible when we claim that we have a high degree of confidence in the reliability of the vast majority that we are confident about. <\/p>\n
I also wonder if this isn\u2019t all consistent with the whole sense of Job, that it is more interested in posing questions, than it is about giving answers, or making things easy for us to grasp. In every way Job invites us to wrestle with it, to exercise our minds and wisdom and discernment. To hold our conclusions lightly and with humility, as we explore them together.
\nSo, with all that in mind, let\u2019s dive in. <\/p>\n
The book begins by introducing Job, a wealthy man, with a large family, who is righteous in all he does and diligent in his religious practices. <\/p>\n
The scene then shifts to the heavenly court, where God is meeting with his courtiers. One of the members of God\u2019s court is described as \u201cThe Satan\u201d. It is possible that the use of the article \u201cThe\u201d is significant. It may indicate a title rather than a personal name. The translation of the word Satan is \u201caccuser\u201d. So, it may be that this scene describes the heavenly court before God\u2019s enemy was thrown out of it, or it may be that what we have here is a member of God\u2019s court who has been appointed by God to this role, a bit like the Prosecuting Barrister for the Crown Prosecution Service. <\/p>\n
God\u2019s first line in the book is in chapter 1v7. And it\u2019s a question. God asks the Satan \u201cWhere have you come from?\u201d and then, \u201chave you considered my servant Job?\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s go back for a moment to our types of question. At first glance these seems to be straight questions asking for information, but this is God we\u2019re talking about. Is there anything that God doesn\u2019t know? Is God asking for information or is God steering the conversation?<\/p>\n
Then we hear from The Satan who has a question, \u201cDoes Job fear God for nothing?\u201d<\/p>\n
Again, what kind of question is this? It\u2019s an existential question. It\u2019s a question that strikes right at the heart of faith. Do people only follow God because of what they get out of it? <\/p>\n
There are a couple of further questions that commentators ask. Is this God\u2019s enemy trying to drive a wedge between God and the faithful servant Job? Or is it God\u2019s chief prosecutor asking the awkward question on behalf of God? How can God know if a person\u2019s religious faith and worship is entirely independent of what God has done for the person? Is it any more than cupboard love? <\/p>\n
So, God gives the Satan permission to strip everything away from Job, but puts a limit on Job\u2019s suffering \u2013 the Satan is not to touch his body. And that is what happens. His wealth goes, his flocks are stolen, his children killed. Disaster. But in the face of all this, how does he react?<\/p>\n
\u201cJob got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he feel to the ground in worship. In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapter 2 takes us back to the heavenly court, and the gathering of all the courtiers. God asks the Satan the same questions. And the Satan\u2019s answer is similar \u2013 surely if you remove the limits you put on Job\u2019s suffering then he would turn from you. <\/p>\n
So, God removes the limits, and allows the Satan to afflict Job\u2019s body with suffering and disease. The Satan went out and made Job\u2019s skin break out in sores, from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. It was so bad that he began scraping himself with a bit of pot, sat in a pile of ash. He had a row with his wife (I don\u2019t have time to go into the details of this tonight, suffice to say that it might not be a simple a row as appears on first reading). But, in all this, Job did not sin in what he said. <\/p>\n
Three friends now approach Job, they sit with him in silence for seven days, sharing his sorrow and suffering. And then, Job breaks the silence. And his big question is, \u201cWhy?\u201d Why was I born for this, why does life continue when it is so painful, why me?<\/p>\n
We then have several chapters of conversation between Job and his friends. On the one side we have the friends who are convinced that Job must have sinned for God to have allowed this suffering, and that he is just making things worse by refusing to admit this, and repenting of what he\u2019d done wrong. They are sure that God punishes evil and rewards good and therefore that Job must have sinned for this punishment to be happening. <\/p>\n
Job continues to protest his innocence, and to ask for a personal hearing in front of God, so that he can hear the case against him, and so that he can mount his defence. After his final protests, another friend, Elihu, speaks. He is angry that Job\u2019s three other friends have failed to make a convincing case and argues that God\u2019s justice is beyond humanity\u2019s understanding and comprehension. <\/p>\n
Then we get to the first of our two readings tonight. So far, God has stayed out of the debate. Job has pleaded with God repeatedly to speak to him, to allow him to put his case, and now God speaks, out of the storm. <\/p>\n
And does God provide answers? Or does God ask questions?<\/p>\n
God asks questions. Impossible, rhetorical questions that expect no answer. This stream of questions about the process of creation, the extent of the created order, the depths of the sea and the making of weather, the ways of wild animals of the ground and the air, echoing the creation order in Genesis 1, are all unanswerable. Well, there is an answer. It is, \u201cno\u201d. No I wasn\u2019t there, I haven\u2019t done that, I haven\u2019t been there, I don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know…\u201d There is not a single question that God asks that Job can answer positively. <\/p>\n
Eventually in chapter 40, Job does get a word in, but it is only to acknowledge his lack of answers, his unworthiness in the face of the might and majesty of God, in the end he asks his own rhetorical question, \u201chow can I reply to you?\u201d<\/p>\n
But God isn\u2019t finished, God continues with more questions. At first God asks whether Job really questions God\u2019s justice, and then launches into a set of questions about Job\u2019s power and ability to conquer the great beasts Behemoth and Leviathan. These may represent actual animals (the footnotes in our pew Bibles suggest that they may have been Elephants or Hippopotamii and crocodiles.) But more likely they refer back to the primordial mythical beasts of the Ancient Near East. King Kong and Godzilla. Balrog and Dragon. Take your pick. <\/p>\n
If Job can\u2019t do that, then how, the implication goes, can he even begin to imagine that he can take on God, who is not just the master but the creator of these beasts. How does he imagine he can contend with God, if he can\u2019t even contend with one of these mighty animals?<\/p>\n
And so we land in our second reading. Here we find that the questions have come to an end. Job has no more questions. But, he doesn\u2019t really have answers either. He has come to realise that there are no answers that he can give to God\u2019s questions, and he has come to accept that God isn\u2019t going to answer his questions, at least not directly.
\nIt is almost as if, as God has been asking these questions, Job has come to realise that God is far bigger than he had ever imagined, that God is far more powerful than he had ever comprehended. In that realisation he has come to believe that he can trust God, even when he doesn\u2019t understand. He had heard of God\u2019s power, and might, and majesty before, but now he has seen it. He has gained a deeper knowledge and understanding of it. It has become more real to him, and so his mind is changed. <\/p>\n
And so we come to Job\u2019s last words in the book named for him, and here we find some of those translation difficulties that I described earlier. As one of the commentaries, talking about verse 6 puts it, <\/p>\n
\u201cThe literal sense is, \u2018I despise (or dissolve) and repent upon dust and ashes.\u2019 If the first verb is taken in the sense of \u2018despise\u2019, an object has to be supplied from the context, and the most likely ones are \u2018myself\u2019 or \u2018my words\u2019. \u2018I repent\u2019 must be taken here in the sense, \u2018 I change my mind\u2019. <\/p>\n
Job is not doing here what his friends have demanded all along, admitting his sinfulness and repenting of it. He is admitting that his previous understanding of God was deficient.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some commentators go further, and suggest that the phrase, \u201cupon dust and ashes\u201d could be taken in the sense \u201cabout dust and ashes\u201d. Throughout Job\u2019s speeches he returned repeatedly to the idea that human beings are dust and will return to dust. Could it be that as well as having gained a deeper and more profound understanding of who God is, that Job has gained a deeper understanding of who he is, of who human beings are in God\u2019s sight? That they are not just dust, but are more than that to God?<\/p>\n
The book finishes off with God\u2019s judgement on Job\u2019s friends, it\u2019s not positive, and on what Job has said along the way. Despite the pointed questions, in the end God says that Job has spoken rightly of God, unlike the friends. Because of this God will heed Job\u2019s prayer when he prays and sacrifices on behalf of his friends. And then Job\u2019s fortunes are restored, his health, his wealth, his folks, his family, more than restored, they are more than what he had before.
\nDoes this restoration undermine one of the themes of the book, that there is no direct link between a person\u2019s behaviour and whether they are blessed by God or are afflicted by suffering? A question for you to think about.<\/p>\n
To round off, I\u2019d like to return to the beginning of our first reading, where we are told, \u201cThe Lord spoke to Job out of the storm.\u201d<\/p>\n
As I was thinking about this, I was reminded of two other times that God spoke in a storm. <\/p>\n
The first one was the storm that Jonah found himself in. God had told the prophet Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the people of that city about God\u2019s judgement. Jonah didn\u2019t want to do that, so he got on a boat to Joppa. God sent a storm, and when the sailors cast lots as to who was the cause of the storm, the lot fell to Jonah. He told them to throw him into the sea, and the storm would stop. Which it did. Jonah went onto Nineveh, via a fish\u2019s stomach. The point is that God spoke in a storm that arose because of a person\u2019s disobedience. <\/p>\n
The second storm is one that arose on lake Galilee. Jesus and his friends were in a boat. A boat that Jesus had told them to get into. They were sailing across the lake when the storm blew up and threatened to flood the boat and sink it. Jesus was asleep. His friends, frightened for their lives woke him up, and pleaded for help. He got up, spoke to the storm, and quieted the waves. He had some challenging words to say to his followers about faith, but that\u2019s not the point that I want to draw out this evening. The point for tonight is that God spoke in a storm that arose when his followers obeyed him. <\/p>\n
It seems to me that storms come in life. Sometimes they will be because we, or someone else in our lives have disobeyed God. Sometimes they will come for no apparent reason while we are obeying God. The fact that we\u2019re in a storm doesn\u2019t tell us where it came from. But, what ever the reason for it, God will be speaking in it, often with questions rather than answers, but always in a way that opens up the way for us to see God and ourselves more clearly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This evening we are diving into the story of Job. We\u2019ve had two readings from the book of Job, but actually we are going to take the opportunity to look at the whole of the book. Even for one of our longer, Dive, sermons, this is quite an undertaking, and we\u2019re not going to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[431],"tags":[1008,50,1253,1255,372,1260,22,1254,1252,1251,1257,1259,1236,1258,633,1256],"class_list":["post-935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellington","tag-angels","tag-bible","tag-book-of-job","tag-fallen-angels","tag-god","tag-is-god","tag-jesus","tag-job","tag-job-381-21","tag-job-421-6","tag-job-in-islam","tag-jobs-wife","tag-prophets-of-islam","tag-question","tag-religion","tag-satan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":936,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions\/936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carterclan.me.uk\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}