Job 1:1-3:26, 1 Corinthians 14:1-17, Psalms 37:12-29, Proverbs 21:25-26
Today is the 21st day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you today as we move forward, taking the next step on our journey through the Scriptures, and that leads us to the threshold of a brand-new book and we’re actually kinda moving into some new territory, a different kind of complexion than we’ve experienced before as we’ve gotten this far in the Bible. And today we’ll begin the book of Job.
Introduction to the book of Job:
And Job is part of a collection of books in the in the Scriptures known as wisdom literature. Of course, wisdom literature as a genre isn’t exclusive to the Bible, there’s wisdom literature in the world but the wisdom literature of the Bible includes part of the Psalms. And the book of Proverbs, obviously, is largely the voice of wisdom. And, so, we’ve definitely been moving our way through the book of Proverbs this year. But the wisdom literature also includes the book we are about to read, Job and Ecclesiastes as well as the song of songs or the song of Solomon. But let’s talk about Job. This…this book that we’re about to read is considered widely as one of the most beautiful pieces of literature in the world but certainly in the Bible. And this book Job, in…in poetic fashion deals with the problem of evil and human suffering and it cries out, “why me” like “why me” and then trying to wrestle and grope for that answer. And from a theological perspective this is called the Odyssey, like the defense of God in the face of human suffering. So, like, the ultimate cosmic question that has been wrestled with philosophically, theologically and on for a very long time, for thousands of years is “how can a good, loving, benevolent, all-powerful God allow such evil and suffering to exist in the world?” And the book of Job is going to take us into that territory and allow us to wrestle with it as we watch Job and his friends wrestle with it. And the interesting thing about Job is that exactly where this book came from, like the origins, this has been disputed for so long, mostly because there’s like nothing in the book gives that gives any kind of anchor point in history, like no…no figures are mentioned that can be searched, no geographies mentioned that can be searched out and kind of attached to a specific time. And, so, this leaves biblical scholars just trying to piece clues together, make best guesses, which leads to a lot of conjecture. But despite this, scholars widely accept the book of Job may very well be one of the most ancient books in the Bible. But even in…even in the Jewish tradition, scholars are like…there’s no complete consensus. Some believe that because the Hebrew is so archaic and there are Hebrew words that aren’t used anywhere else in the Bible that are found in the book of Job, that Job was very…this is very ancient, like contemporary with Abraham, maybe or Jacob. But then others believe that…that this…this was written during the time of exile when things were so bad for the Hebrew people and these questions were being wrestled with and perhaps that the use of certain Hebrew words and the way that this is all organized is because the scribe who wrote this down didn’t have Hebrew as their first language. And then there are many who follow the tradition that Job was collected or written by Moses. And if that were the case, then this is…this would be Moses theological treatise on suffering or maybe it was an oral tradition that had been passed down and finally collected at that time. Regardless, Job is very ancient. It is considered one of the most beautifully written pieces of literature and is riveting as we will enter into the story and begin to wrestle with the issue of suffering. And we’ll Job and we’ll see the backdrop basically. The backdrop, what happens to Job is the backdrop, his suffering is the backup. And the we’ll see his friends who hear of what has happened to him, they come to be with him and sit with him in his suffering and then they begin the dialogue. And it’s in the dialogue that we begin to see the wrestling with the question of suffering. And is what we find is that the things that Job’s friends say to Job aren’t dissimilar to the things that we say to people that are suffering or that people say to us when we feel like we’re suffering, only to find out, as the…as the book goes on, that they didn’t know what they were talking about. And we will see the Job, he doesn’t want answers from people. He wants God. He wants the answer from God. He just doesn’t know where to go to find God to get this answer until God shows up. And we’ll leave it at that. Let’s dive into the book instead of talking about the book. We’re reading from the expanded Bible this week. Job chapters 1, 2, and 3.
Commentary:
Okay. So, obviously we’ve begun the book of Job and we talked about the book of Job and we’re gonna settle in with the book of Job for…for a little bit, but we see now the predicament, we…we see the backdrop. What happened to Job is that systematically everything in his life was dismantled. Like he lost everything that gave him security. He lost those that he loved, he lost his health, he lost it all. And the way that it reads in the Scripture, you know, it’s like one bad message can’t hardly be delivered before the next messenger arrives with even more bad news. And he can’t finish before even something worse comes along. You can’t even catch your breath, like something we should be able to immediately kind of identify with. Although, I don’t know that many of us have ever had any kind of scenario like Job actually did. But it feels like that at times, like bad news turns to more bad news, you can’t like quite process, the thing that happened before the next things hitting and you’re just over overwhelmed by it all. Like you find yourself laying on your back, looking up at the sky going like, “how did I fall down? Like, what…what happened?” And it’s in these moments that we do begin to turn to, “why me? What is going on?” And suddenly the voice of accusation begins to be tipped toward God, right? There’s this subtle questioning of God, “why did you let this happen to me?” And we’ve all gone through this and it's…there’s an irony here because all of the sudden very subtly we can become the accuser of God. And we must remember who the accuser in this story is. In the Job story the accuser is…is called the Satan or the devil. It’s one of the first things that we can kind of just begin to glean out of Job is I can become that agent toward God in very slow-moving subtle ways when I have to face hardship and suffering. What we don’t see in Job is that behavior. We see Job very sad, shocked, can’t even recognize him and even lamenting the day that he was born. But when Job got all the bad news, and this is one of the most riveting things in all of the Bible for me, like I don’t ever get to this point and…and…and just shocked by it, just taken aback. Job’s response isn’t to do what his wife told him to do, which is curse God and die. He…he just falls down. I can’t understand that. He just falls down and begins to mourn but his mourning isn’t, “why, why, why?” His mourning is worship. “Naked I came here. Naked I’ll leave here. The Lord gave. The Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” That is so huge. I am…I mean…I wish I could suffer that way. That’s not usually how I can approach these things. The thing of it is though, our response to suffering and hardship really tells the truth about how we sense God’s presence in our lives. It actually is the thing that begins to answer the question about whether or not we believe God is good. It’s certainly easy enough to believe God is good when showers of blessing are falling all around you and things are perfect. It’s a different story when things aren’t perfect. So may we go into our day thinking about that. May the image of Job receiving one after the other after the other after the other the worst possible news, his response is to fall and worship before God.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit we invite You into that as we move into this new territory with a completely different complexion, as we begin to…to plumb the depths of our own suffering, as we begin to look at it through this lens that the Bible is bringing us to. We invite Your Holy Spirit. We believe You are good, and Your mercy endures forever. And we confess that we find that statement to be a challenge when we’re facing hardship and suffering. What is that all about Lord? We just want to move on when hardship comes, we just want to get out of it as quickly as possible and forget it as quickly as possible. And yet the times that we have had to endure, which is such a major theme in the Bible, the times that we’ve had to keep moving when it felt like there was no more energy, when it felt like everything was stacked against us, we’re still here. We’re still here. You have somehow brought us through. We’re still here and some of those most difficult moments have been the moments that have shaped us, that have given us our convictions about life. And, so, we invite Your Holy Spirit into all the territory that we’re gonna cover in these coming days and weeks. Come Holy Spirit in the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
Song
Blessed Be the Name of the Lord - Brent Bourgeois
May the day perish on which I was born
May the stars and its morning be dim
Why is life given to the bitter of soul
Or to those who stand in anger of Him
He pierces my heart and does not pity
He breaks me with wound upon wound
Remember I pray that You made me like clay
And You’ll return me to dust again soon
Oh
naked I came from my mother’s womb
And naked I shall return
For
the Lord gave the Lord has taken away
Blessed
be the name of the Lord
Blessed
be the name
Of
the Lord
He commands the Sun and it does not rise
He treads on the waves of the sea
Yet how small a whisper we hear of Him
For
He is not a man you see
That my words were written forever
With pen and golden rod
My
redeemer shall stand at last on the earth
In my flesh I shall see God
Oh
naked I came from my mother’s womb
And naked I shall return
For
the Lord gave the Lord has taken away
Blessed
be the name of the Lord
Blessed
be the name
Of
the Lord
But now ask the beasts and they will tell you
And the birds of the air and they will teach you
Or
the fish of the sea will explain it to you
That the hand of the Lord has done this
In
whose hand is the life of every living thing
And the flesh of all mankind
Oh
naked I came from my mother’s
womb
And naked I shall return
For
the Lord gave the Lord has taken away
Blessed
be the name of the Lord
Blessed
be the name of
the Lord