Job 1:1-3:26, 1 Corinthians 14:1-17, Psalms 37:12-29, Proverbs 21:25-26
Today is the 22nd day of August welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I am Brian it’s great to be here with you. I’m here in the rolling hills of Tennessee and you are where you are, but we are still together around the Global Campfire as we take the next step forward. We have just begun yesterday the book of Job, which kinda laid out the context of the story. Job’s friends have come to his side. They have sat for a week in silence. Job has begun to speak about how he wishes he had never been born. And now today we will begin to hear from Job’s friends. And Job, of course, a conversation is beginning. Job chapters 4, 5, 6, and seven today.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Job, we…as we were talking about the beginning, we’ve learned what happened to Job. We saw Job have the worst day that really I can even imagine. He literally lost everything, including his children in a day. In like wave after wave or blow-by-blow these disasters coming and before the days over Job is in a life that doesn’t look like his life at all, but we also began to understand who Job is by watching what he does once he receives blow after blow of tragedy. He greev. It’s terrible. He tears his clothes. He throws ashes on his head. He falls to the ground. We can imagine all that. But then he worships says essentially everything that I have was given to me. The Lord is given, the Lord has taken away. Blessed to be the name of the Lord, which is indeed a riveting way to begin a book. And then his wife, you know, he’s got all these sores and boils and his wife tells him to curse God and die. What a horrible thing to say to your spouse. And Job doesn’t call her names are curse her or any of the…or send her away or anything like that. He says, should we not receive the bad with the good? And then Job’s friends, they make their journey and they come and sit with Job and as we read yesterday they sat in silence for a week until Job spoke, which is what they were waiting for. This is the practice called Shiva, which is a way of being in grief with someone. It’s just a little different than the customs that we are accustomed to during grief. In Shiva, you come, and you do exactly what his friends did, you sit. You sit with the person who has been devastated and you sit, and there’s no pressure to say the right thing. You’re not really supposed to say anything. And there’s no pressure on the grieving person to then have to become the caretaker of those who are here to take care of them and make them feel okay and take care of their needs and…and speak and tell them that everything’s gonna be okay. Nobody’s expecting anything. And, so, we sit in silence and what you are offering is more potent and more powerful than anything you could say. You are offering your presence. You showed up. You’re there. You’re present in it. And when the grieving person wants to speak you speak and when they want to eat you eat. When they don’t want to talk, you don’t talk. When they want to sleep they sleep. And this is what we’re…it’s beautiful, really. And this wat we’re seeing playing out in the book of Job, as his friends come to be with him in his moment of absolute devastation. And then the conversation began. Job who spoke first. That’s what everyone was waiting for, and he said he wished he’d never been born. And we hear the first response from one of Job’s friends. His name is Eliphaz and he’s trying to comfort Job. And his message to Joe is basically that things happen for a reason and that if he would trust in God the Lord would certainly be merciful and rescue and restore him, which sounds like the kinds of things that we say when we’re trying to be the voice of comfort. And that’s a really interesting thing about Job. Job’s friends say the kinds of things that we say. It’s just in this case, Job isn't…it’s not that he’s not accepting what they’re saying, he just becomes more and more agitated about it because they can’t say anything that he’s actually looking for. They aren’t able to provide the answers that he seeks. He has been on the other side before. He has been the one offering words of comfort. In this case he knows what can be said and he knows what human wisdom can provide and if they’re not able to provide something beyond that, it’s not that he doesn’t care if they’re there it’s just they’re not helping him. Job wants God to personally explain exactly what it is that he did wrong because he feels like judgment is upon them from the hand of God, and he doesn’t know why. And, so, as we continue in these days in front of us in the book of Job let’s watch both sides of this. Let’s watch what his friends are telling Job and understand that there’d be some familiar things there. Let’s also watch Job and how he responds and how as they his friends lay out all of their wisdom, he is more and more clear that they don’t have what he is looking for. He wants an audience with God. He just doesn’t know where to find Him, but he will as we will see soon enough.
Prayer:
Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for all of the different complexions of it and all of the different nuances of it and…and the way that it speaks into our souls no matter what we are experiencing. And in this case now we are in a time where we are experiencing words about suffering, words about cosmic justice, things that we wonder about, things that we don’t understand, things that we wrestle and grapple with. And, so, Holy Spirit come and lead us forward. Give us insight, give us awareness, take us further and deeper we ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.
Community Prayer and Praise:
Coming soon…