Partakers Christian Podcasts

Job - Why God? - Part 7

Study 7 : Job 29-31

Job’s self-assessment.

 We now come to two long speeches: the first by Job, summarizing his thinking, is 3 chapters long; the second by a new guy, Elihu, is 5 chapters long.

Job cannot have been an old man when the disasters struck him. However long he lived (another 140 years according to the last chapter) he was only middle-aged for he had time to have another complete farming career and a considerable family. But much of what he describes in these chapters is remarkably similar to the common experience of an old person in western culture. Up to about 100 years ago most people in the world only lived in one or two or three places their whole lives long, often one as they grew up and just another subsequent to marriage. Consequently as they grew old they would be surrounded by people they had known for a very long time: family, friends and acquaintances. For many today things are very different. Education and job opportunities take us to live in many different places. Sometimes parents demand a weekly visit but that tends to be a disaster, as it leaves one not really belonging in either the place of residence or the parent’s home area. As a result of this mobility we will often enter old age and retirement surrounded mainly by strangers. The situation Job describes in a totally different culture and for very specific reasons is extraordinarily like that which may be your experience, as in part it is mine, or as it may be yours at some future date.

JOB 29: 1 – 6.

Assuming you are or have been married and had a family you will remember that it was great fun when you were in your prime and they were growing up. We then did all sorts of things: building sand castles, playing with toy trains etc. that we now have no excuse to do!

JOB 29: 7 – 25.

Our experience would have been, in detail, very different from Job’s yet it probably had much the same effect. We probably had a job, which gave us status. We mattered. We were somebody. Even if we had no very exalted role, not in charge of anybody else, we still had a position in some firm or organisation or in the family. We may not have realised it at the time but we drew strength from that sense of significance. But, if like me you are old, you will find it easy to relate to what Job says next.

JOB 30: 1 – 15.

What a magnificent phrase that is: “God has unstrung my bow”. Job no longer has the strength, or the will, to pull the bowstring back far enough to send an arrow far enough to matter. I used to pride myself on my ability to run upstairs two, or even three, steps at a time. No longer. Now an old man I go up sedately one step at a time. That is my equivalent to having my bow unstrung.

Question: if you are getting older – what is your equivalent to the unstrung bow: loss of strength or beauty or what?

More significantly, with retirement often comes a great loss of status. (More in Western societies than in those of the Third world where there is usually some role even the aged are expected to fulfil). No one now looks for your advice; no one looks up to you as someone that matters.

Question: that is not true in all societies. How good is the one in which you live at using the advice and gifts of old folk?

If circumstances mean that you, an older person, no longer live where you spent most of your working life then it may well feel as though you are being mocked by younger people as Job was, even when they are being polite to you.

JOB 30: 16 – 41.

Old age commonly brings aches and pains in joints and muscles! Job thinks of these as the work of God “tossing me about in the storm”. We think about such things in a very different way but the experience is just as real; my right ankle, left knee and left shoulder all ache! It is indeed like being tossed about in a storm.

Unfortunately Job’s final chapter is a bad note to end on, here it is: JOB 31: 1 – 40.

Each of us will have a different life story to tell. As we get older we tend to reminisce more and more, telling the old stories of what has happened to us and what we have done. Family and friends may get fed up with stories of the “good old days” if we tell them too often, and they may not have been all that good. It is easy to fail to realise how much the world, and probably our society has advanced during our lifetime.

In our society, and many others, loneliness coming from the mobility of our lives or the smallness of our family can be the curse of old age for many. It probably was not Job’s problem although the depth of his grief will have tended to isolate him from other people.

The element in the equation that is not considered in the book of Job is the role that the company of the Lord’s people should play in the life of those in distress or in old age. In Job’s day they were the people of Israel – but Job was probably not an Israelite – and in our day it is the local church. Sadly, because of the extreme individualism in modern Western society, it may not be very good at supporting the struggling. Even when it tries it is usually a case of one individual helping another rather than any sense of a corporate action supporting an individual. Other cultures in other societies often do these things much better.

Job has succeeded in summarizing very accurately most of the problems of old age. I, for one, can relate to his mutterings very easily (I am now 80 years old). The trouble is that in all these 3 chapters there is very little positive at all. We have to wait until Elihu has had his say and the Lord speaks out of the storm clouds before we get any positive encouragement. Every good doctor makes a careful diagnosis of what is wrong with a patient before he prescribes a treatment or picks up his scalpel. This is the diagnosis – particularly if you are in your later years.

This has been a strange study to write. There is very little that is positive here. But it is important to think about the situation we, or other people, are in. that is diagnosis.

Question: can you think out what might be the cure for you? For others?

 

 

 

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Job - Why God? - Part 6

Study 6 : Job 26-28

Glorious Wisdom.

This study falls into 2 parts. First there are the chapters after number 23 and up to chapter 28. But I am going to skip over these. They do not add a great deal to what we have already thought about and, indeed, appear somewhat muddled. So much so that many scholars think they have got scrambled somewhere between Job and us. Two bits are worth reading. The first is as much for amusement as anything else! Job has already called his friends “miserable comforters” and he now unleashes a real blast of sarcasm against them in 26:1–4..

 

Much more positively Job once again states that nothing will make him give up his faith in the Lord and his righteousness. Theses are words worth hearing in these days when so many are prepared to give up their faith and thus their integrity for the thinnest of reasons.  Hear that in 27: 1 – 6.

 

But then the steady progression of argument between Job and his friends is suddenly interrupted by a beautiful poem in chapter 28. At first sight it seems to cut across the main argument of the book and not to be about the same sort of things at all, but in fact it takes us back to and reminds us what the whole book is really about. This is indicated by the last verse of this chapter repeating the main points of the very first chapter of the book. The argument in this chapter 28 is so subtle we reach v 12 before we are told what the subject of the poem, and therefore of the book really is. Though even before we learn that we can still understand the writing as an extended metaphor of all the to-ing and fro-ing that has occurred so far. Here are those first 11 verses of chapter 28.

Isn’t that magnificent? Just like miners, Job and his friends have been hacking away in the dark hoping to find some precious idea that will light up the gloom that surrounds Job. Neither the lion nor the eagle can get anywhere near what the miners are after. It is only mankind that has any interest in things like this.

We finally learn what it is all about in v12. And this is expanded on in the rest of the chapter: first with a great statement of praise of how important it is and then the statement that it is ultimately a spiritual attribute and can therefore only be obtained from the Lord. Here is the rest of this chapter.

Wisdom is a very important Biblical concept that is much neglected so we will explore it in some detail. The word ‘wisdom’ is used in several different ways in the Bible of which we are interested in three:

• living well in the practical life of every day, equating to the Way of the NT,
• God’s knowledge and creative power,
• the personification of this second meaning of Wisdom, with the NT revealing Jesus is that personification.

There are associated concepts of: the Sage, the Wise Man (or Woman), and the books of Wisdom (Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and some Psalms; also Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha).

We, like Job, are most interested in the first of these: how can we live well in this difficult world. There is plenty of wisdom, knowledge and understanding all around us. We use it everyday when we watch the TV or go out in a car, but none of that sort of wisdom says anything about the meaning of life and how we can best navigate all the difficult situations, which are an inevitable part of living. In short, that sort of wisdom is not about what I have called living well. To reach that goal, i) in my list, will mean that we have to understand ii) God’s knowledge in Creation and iii) the role of Jesus in imparting wisdom to us. None of this is being wise in any sense of becoming a graduate, or getting a Master’s, let alone gaining a Doctorate, in either a secular field of study or even a Biblical one. No, it is something well within the reach of each and everyone of us. It may be a little old lady, like my lovely, long dead, grandmother, who is the wise person in this Biblical definition of Wisdom. It is all about something difficult to describe but easy to recognize when you meet a truly wise person. It is about living well, living contentedly, making good decisions, fitting into one’s world well, and relating well to other people. We can all do all those things but we can also all fail horribly to do them!

Question: of the people you know well, who lives wisely? Try to work out what it is about those people that made them go to the top of your private list of wise people.

We cannot live well by accident. Living well doesn’t just happen. We have to think out what our aims and objectives in life are before we will get anything right. It is really sad that so much of western culture refuses to do so. We are like Israel in the time of the Judges when ‘everyone did what was right in their own eyes’. In the ancient world Jewish scribes and Greek philosophers argued about what was the best way to live. We don’t. We just try to accumulate more and better material things, thinking, quite wrongly, that a bigger pile of toys will bring us true satisfaction and contentment in life. They won’t.

Let me reread what the author of the poem said in v12 – 22.  He asks himself, and us, where can true wisdom be found – how can we learn to live well. His answer to his own question is – I can’t find it! I don’t know how to live well. And I am sure we can all say ”amen” to that. Here are those verses.  

But then he realises what the answer to his question is: it is found in God, the Lord, and only in him. That is what he says in the remainder of the chapter, v 23 – 28. Here it is.

The crucial phrase is “the fear of the Lord” in the last verse, a surprisingly ordinary common phrase in the OT. But it is easy to misunderstand in our translations.  It has nothing to do with being frightened. It means respecting, honouring, obeying the Lord. To borrow, and change slightly, a NT phrase it means to walk in step with the Lord, with Jesus. 

And we do need to consider the NT here. In the eyes of the NT writers Jesus was the personification of the Wisdom of the OT, Wisdom actually walking this earth along the dusty tracks of Galilee and Judea. OT wisdom says “I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was constantly at his side. I was filled with delight day after day rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world
 and delighting in mankind.” So the hymn writer was right when he talked of Jesus “flinging stars into space”.

Jesus, himself, announced that he was Wisdom. Matthew reports in 11: 19 that he said, in a way very reminiscent of the OT wisdom literature, “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: We played the pipe for you,
  and you did not dance; we sang a dirge,
 and you did not mourn.’ For John the Baptist came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom (that is me, Jesus) is proved right by her deeds.”

Paul hopes that the Colossian Christians “ may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” This is where Wisdom has got to – it has come into full view in the person of Jesus.

In Romans 6 Paul says “all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” And then goes on in v8 “if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him”.

To live with him is to fear the Lord, to use Job’s language. To use more modern language: it is to be plugged in to him so that all his Spirit power and, in particular, all his wisdom can flow into us - you and me - an endless and bottomless resource for living well. We are plugged in if we pray, read, worship and keep the ways and calls of Jesus constantly active in our lives. Wow!

Question: Are you plugged in? Do you live well? Do you know this great resource, which will take you through life, living well, even if your life looks desperately difficult from outside? I do hope so.

 

 

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Job - Why God? - Part 5

Study 5 : Job 20-23

Job begins to see his way forward.

In chapter 20 Zophar is clearly convinced that Job is a sinner and is suffering as a direct consequence. He doesn’t say so directly but it is the obvious implication of what he says. In the Bible sin is almost always a result of how somebody has failed to live well in relationship to other people. It is seldom about a failure to live well directly towards God by failing to worship correctly or failing to follow the correct prescribed religious observances. So Zophar criticizes Job in his actions towards other people. Zophar raises another and more difficult question. He seems to suggest that there is a major difference between good and evil in how long they last. He says that evil is inherently short lived, unlike good that lasts. Well, he doesn’t actually say that good lasts longer but that, again, would seem to be strongly implied by what he says. Listen out for those two implications as I read the chapter.

 

Question:       what do you think? Is it true that those who delight in evil things know that they do not last? Are they always looking over their shoulders wondering whether they will be found out? Are good things always more enjoyable than those that are not good?

Answer:        that is a really difficult one, but it is worth thinking about. Think of the things that you do. Is it true that the enjoyment of the good lasts longer than the enjoyment of the not so good? I think it is because I am happy to remember the good things I have done but always try to forget the bad things. But that is a personal opinion with which not everone would agree. Have you got a friend you could argue it out with?

 

In the next chapter, 21, Job vigorously repudiates the implied accusation against him. He points out that some people behave very badly but God does not punish them. He reckons that we all, good and bad alike, have to live in the middle of the NCL, the Normal Chaos of Life. Here is chapter 21.

 

I introduced the idea of the NCL early in these studies, which may have surprised or even shocked you! My justification for doing so is here in this chapter and will be confirmed in chapter 23. Very often preachers and teachers will take a very simplistic line: good things happen to good people, bad things to bad people. This may be very subtly done. When we were teaching in a school in Pakistan many of the staff would tell the kids: your parents are doing good things so no harm will come to them. They had a difficult time explaining what had happened when one of the parents was killed by a falling rock on a straightforward local walk. The NCL exists, as Job says.

 

In the next chapter Eliphaz  accuses Job of wrongdoing, particularly to the defenceless – widows and orphans. I will read that now. READ.  I find that accusation interesting because we have been watching a TV drama series, Downton Abbey. It tells the story of a large household belonging to a senior nobleman, the Earl of Grantham. He is portrayed as having to take the decisions for a great many people, family, friends and servants. It is apparent that in many things, because he is the controlling boss man, he takes views that are strikingly different from those of just about everybody else around him. Perhaps this is what Eliphaz is highlighting here. Job had a huge household, before the disasters hit him, and had to make many decisions, being the controlling boss to an even greater extent than the Earl of Grantham. So, for instance, we read in v6 that he took clothes from the poor to guarantee payment of a debt. Faced with conflicting demands on his resources Job has opted for the rich man’s solution. He has been taking a rich man’s view of what is right and what is wrong and needs to revise his thinking. So we read in v13 – 14, “Do you think the deep darkness hides you from God? / Do thick clouds cover his eyes , as he walks around heaven’s dome high above the earth.” And in 23 – 26 “If you return to God and turn from sin, all will go well for you. / So get rid of your finest gold, as though it were sand. / Let God all powerful be your silver and gold, and you will find happiness by worshipping him.”

 

That all makes good sense. The trouble is that it is all wrong; it is not a true picture of Job. Job’s self portrait in chapters 29 and 32 is very different and fits much better the view we get from all the rest of the story. He was an essentially good and righteous man.

 

To return to what Eliphaz said: the NT equivalent is when Jesus said to the rich young man “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

 

Are you rich? Am I rich? Our probable reaction is to say – of course not! But by the standards of the ages we are rich. You are using a computer or a tablet to hear or read this. That is an item of enormously sophisticated luxury, unknown to the vast majority of those who have ever lived on this planet. We are rich.

 

Question:       in what ways do you mistreat the poor? Who suffers so that you can eat cheap food, wear cheap clothes and so on? Are there subtle ways that we, like Job according to Eliphaz, live well because we are rich?

Answer:        up to you of course. But these are difficult things to confront if you, like me, live in the affluent west!

 

Job continues to struggle with his problem – what is called the problem of Theodicy, that is ‘how can we reconcile so much evil in the world with our understanding that God is a good God?’ First he struggles with his inability to get close enough to God to challenge him over what has happened. Here is chapter 23.

 

Job has a problem but he is also close to, if not exactly a solution, at least to the best way forward for him, and indeed for us. He wants contact and fellowship with God, not a solution to the academic riddle of Theodicy. He is very right to do so and will eventually achieve that contact and fellowship in the last few chapters of the book.

 

We have the same problem as Job – how can we understand the world in which we live where so much can go wrong and there is so much evil. And our solution is the same as his – we need to be close to God; we need fellowship with God. But we are much better off than poor old Job because we know about a broken, suffering God-man hanging on a cross, dying, sharing in all the worst that this world has. We are part of his people, Jesus’ people. ‘We have been united with him in a death like his’ therefore ‘we will be united with him in a resurrection like his’ as Paul says in Romans 6. And, as he tells the Colossian Christians (3: 1 – 4) ‘Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.’

 

Wow! Rejoice in whatever of this world’s difficulties, troubles and agonies may come your way because you have a glorious future with the Risen Jesus.

 

 

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Job - Why God? - Part 4

Study 4 : Job 16 - 19

Job continues to struggle,

In these chapters Job says some truly astonishing things that we may otherwise overlook.  To give you an idea of what is to come these are: in chapters 16 and 17 he reckons that he has been attacked by God, which leads to him saying that he has been abused by God; and then after a further statement from Bildad in chapter 18, which implies that he, Job, must be a wicked man, Job says in chapter 19 that although God is against him he has a strong hope that he will be able to state his case before the heavenly court and he hopes to be supported by an effective advocate. Who exactly that advocate will be is not clear to him – though perhaps it is to us!

 

First, the relatively easy passage, Job 16:1–5, where Job is asking himself how he would do if he was trying to comfort a friend who was suffering as he is suffering. Here it is.

If someone else is suffering it is so easy to stack up a heap of conventional phrases such as ‘you will soon feel better’ even when we know that our friend is dying, or, when we visit someone in hospital ‘cheer up, I’ve brought you some grapes’ which we then proceed to eat while our friend cannot face food of any sort, and so on.

 

Question: how do you do as a comforter? How would you rate yourself?

Answer: up to you, of course. Paul never actually lists comforting as a gift. He does tell the Christians in Corinth that we should all be good at comforting because we claim as our Father God the ‘Father of compassion and God of all comfort’, but I do think some people are given a very real gift to say the right and helpful thing more than others do when faced with suffering. Some people are more adept at saying the wrong thing, than the right and helpful thing when someone is having a very hard time. If you are a gifted comforter make sure you use your gift as much as possible.

 

Now we come to the difficult passage 16:6 – 17. Job says his God is his enemy, his attacker and that there is such a thing as divine violence and abuse. Here it is.

Is it really so, or is Job just lashing out with words in his frustration and bitterness at what has happened to him, and his, for no reason he can begin to understand. I have been fortunate enough to live a peaceful life without any major traumas but many of you listening or reading this may well be shut in, unable to get out much because of some major trauma in your life or struggling in other ways, so I must be careful what I say from a position of inexperience. There are other statements like this in scripture. The Psalmist says ‘Your arrows have pierced me, 
 and your hand has come down on me’, but then goes on to say ‘because of my sin’. Lamentations chapter 3 talks at length of the violence of God but the writer cannot believe that will go on for ever because ‘of his unfailing love’ and traces the problem back to sin. Job never does that. There will eventually be comfort for Job when we get to the last chapter of the book. But there was no comfort for The Jewish members of God’s ancient people who died in the holocaust less than 100 years ago.

 

There are, I think, 3 lessons here.

1. In extremes of anguish we may, and even perhaps should, shout at God without losing our faith and our standing before him;
2. God is with us, as he was with Job, and will be in the succeeding chapters, whatever may happen;
3. Usually, but not always, there is light at the end of the tunnel. We are always subject to the NCL, the normal chaos of living. That is the way God created the world. We are in that world and therefore have to accept that world the way he designed it – even when we do not understand the design principles.

 

Jesus taught us to think of God as our loving heavenly Father, contrasting sharply with the most obvious OT picture of a creator/ruler/judge, even though there God is also a covenant God of steadfast love and faithfulness. Job evidently thought mainly of the creator/ruler/judge God and could not resolve the apparent conflict between that God and the covenant God. Neither will we ever be able to do so. We have to live with that conflict, holding to both images, not despairing because we cannot resolve the paradox, continuing to honour and trust the Lord and drawing strength from both Biblical pictures. Only that way will we be able to live with the complexities of life that we cannot fully understand or resolve.

 

Job is very ready to give up. He says this in the vivid pictures of chapter 17.

 

Next Bildad speaks up in chapter 18. He makes a fundamental mistake. He thinks the line between good and evil passes between people with some on one side some on the other. But in the real world it is not so. The line between good and evil runs through all of us; some of you, some of me, is on one side, some on the other. We are, like all the human race, made in the image of God, but on the other hand have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But Bildad is sure that Job is entirely the wrong side of the line between good and evil. He doesn’t quite say so but it is very clear that that is what he thinks is why Job has had such a tough time.

And so to the famous chapter 19: famous because of one phrase ‘I know that my redeemer lives’ and one song in Handel’s Messiah. But is it really a statement about Jesus? We need to look at it carefully. I will read the first 6 verses where Job continues to react against his so ineffective comforters.

At this point I am going to switch from the NIV that I have been using as the version you are most likely to have to the Contemporary English Version, the successor to the Good News Version, because the argument is easier to follow in that. In the next 16 verses he describes his plight in some vivid images. He is trapped in a hunter’s net; a landslide blocks his way; he is caught in the dark; he loses his high place in society; he is uprooted like an old tree; he is besieged in his tent. Worse than all that he has lost all his closest relationships with family, household and friends. It is a sorry story, which I now read, 6-22.

Yet, all is not lost. In a surprising and memorable passage Job now turns to God. These are verses 23, 24.

He wants what he says to be recorded, not in a computer memory, which can be so easily erased, but engraved in rock with the letters filled with lead so they can be read forever. At least, that is what he hopes for. The CEV has ‘I wish’ and the NIV has ‘Oh that”. He has no certainty.

Then he makes his great pronouncement; here it is 25 – 27.  It is all about his goel, as the original word is, translated as redeemer or saviour, his kinsman-redeemer, who will come to his rescue. Even after all his bitter and angry statements railing against God he knows that only God, or some delegate of his, will be adequate to come to his rescue.  The OT goel was a close kinsman, an elder brother or a senior uncle or some other close and senior family member, whose responsibility it was to avenge a wrong, buy back a field that was in danger of being lost to the family estate or marry a widow to continue the family (as Boaz, the best known goel, did for Ruth). Experts argue about whom Job was thinking of when he wrote that. We don’t have to argue about who our goel is, it is Jesus.

It is rather surprising that the goel does not appear in the NT. The writer to the Hebrews perhaps get closest when he says Jesus was ‘not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters’ but he then goes on to talk about him as our high priest and not as our goel. However we can say with certainty that he is our kinsman for Gal 4: 7 says ‘you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir’. He is, as it were, our elder brother. And he is our redeemer as Peter says in his 1: 18, 19 ‘it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ’. So he is our goel, our kinsman-redeemer.

For Job it was a just a hope, an ‘I wish’ but for us it is a certainty ‘God made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. …it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God ‘.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like that. We are all capable of sliding into a dark, damp ditch of despair, perhaps not as deep and dark as the one poor old Job had got into, but just as real to us. But we have a better promise and a clearer hope than he ever had. Brother, sister, have courage.

 

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Job - Why God? - Part 3

Study 3 : Job 12 - 14

Job states his case.

 

Chapter 12 - after all his ‘friends’ have stated their cases and he has answered them Job makes a major statement in these 3 chapters of how he views the situation. Much of what he says could be regarded as very pessimistic as he expresses his, quite natural, unhappiness at what has happened to him and his family. But I think we are expected to learn several things from his experiences and what he says, so we will try to make the most of it!

To repeat yet again what was said in the introduction to the first study: behind all the arguments of the 3 friends is what we are calling a CEP, a cause-effect principle, operating in moral theology. They are all, his friends and Job, saying that everything that happens to a person has a moral cause hidden behind it. In essence: good things happen to good people; bad things happen to bad people. From that starting point his ‘friends’ have deduced that however much Job may protest otherwise he is not a good person because bad things have happened to him! This theology is still around both inside and outside the church. It appears every time someone says “he didn’t deserve that!” or “God’s not fair!”. In these chapters Job begins to understand and to argue that the world does not work that way. Life is just not as simple as that.

Question: Here is a question about those verses. What does Job really mean by what he says here? How would you describe his attitude expressed in these words?

Answer: Job is being very sarcastic. You have to be quite a clever person to be as sarcastic as this! He is clearly quite fed up with the way his so-called friends are treating him. He knows, as we know from having read the first 2 chapters of this book, that he is not guilty of serious sin; his experiences are not a reflection of who he is or what he has done; he is not being punished in any way for misdeeds he may have committed. What has happened is part of the NCL, the normal chaos of life.

Job is still being sarcastic through the rest of the chapter – the animals are wise, wiser than his friends, God treats the high and mighty, people like his friends, just the same as everyone else, nations rise and fall as God decrees. And we suddenly realise that, in being sarcastic, Job has actually moved forward to understand that life is chaotic, the NCL does happen, that is the way the world works.

The next step that he takes in the next chapter is to start arguing that he wants to appear before God in a court of law to argue his case. Job 13:1–19.

Job is starting to be a great deal more positive. I am no expert on the stages of grief but I think this might be regarded as a good sign – he is starting to think more forcefully and in it all he is still declaring his faith. He said ‘though he slay me, yet will I hope in him’. Well done Job – that sounds good.

He continues in much the same way in the remainder of the chapter – Job 13:20-28.

But it proves to be a false dawn. In the next few verses, 14:1–6, he slides back into despair. He wants God to leave him alone.

But then, equally suddenly, he thinks of a metaphor for his existence in 14: 7 – 9. READ. If a tree is cut down it is not finished – it will send out new buds, it will sprout again. It won’t grow to be the same tree it might have been before, but it will grow, more plant like, less tree like, but still alive and still valuable. There is something we call hope.

And yet again he changes direction in 14: 10 – 22. READ. He goes backwards and forwards. Humans die and that is the end of them unlike a tree. But perhaps that is a good thing because his sin, supposing that that is the problem after all, will be covered over. No – perhaps it isn’t because the Lord God destroys hope the way a stream in flood wll destroy the surrounding ground.

Make up your mind, Job. Which way is it?

It would be easy to get fed up with Job in his swinging backwards and forwards, his pessimism and his optimism, his inability to make up his mind about the future – is there hope, somewhere in the future, or is his future, our future, as black as he thinks in his down moments.

What positive, helpful, ideas can we get from this tossing and turning of Job. They are not immediately obvious but I think there are three.

The first is this. Job is becoming furious with his 3 friends because they have gone on blundering along with so many words using OK phrases as bandages to wrap around his wounds without healing them at all. Paul said the gift of prophecy is ‘to speak to people for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort’. It is all too easy to major on the first 2 of those and forget about the comfort bit. Not everyone is able to say the right words to offer real comfort to the suffering or struggling. It is a real gift for those who can. These 3 guys did not have it.

Question: what about you? Do you have this gift?

Answer: up to you, of course. If you do have it – use it. If not – don’t make the same sort of mistake these guys did.

 

The second idea we can get from these chapters is this: We can go down like Job. Horrible things can happen to us, and to those whom we love, our world can crash round our ears but that is not the end. We should still have faith; we should still be faithful. ‘Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him’ said Job and that can and should be our statement too. I didn’t call it a prayer in that last sentence, but a statement, for fear that it might then be read as a possibility and not, as it should be, as a certainty.

We are all subject to the NCL, some of us more heavily, more dangerously, than others. We don’t know why that is the way the world is, we just have to accept that the world that our loving God, our Creator God, created is a world of chaos. He may know what it all means – he does know what it all means – but we do not.

And the third thing we have to learn from these experiences of Job is this: the nature of God is such that we may argue with him. He is that sort of God. No, shut away, unapproachable God is he. Job, like the psalmist, was allowed to complain, to lament, to grumble, to sulk, but God did not refuse to listen to him. Sometimes we are like that: complaining, grumbling, lamenting, sulking, but God is still our God, our loving, listening, hearing God. That is easier for us to understand, to grasp than it was for Job because we know about Jesus. We know that, although Jesus was the agent of creation, responsible for all that is, he was still prepared to listen to, even to argue with, the non-Israelite woman who was desperate to have her daughter healed. He said ‘it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs’ and she retorted ‘even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table’. And he accepted what she said and changed his mind so that her daughter was healed.

That is the sort of God with whom we have to do: a loving, caring, arguing, concerned God – in fact an amazingly human God (because we are made in the image of God so, to at least some extent, he has to be in the image of what is best in being human).

Jesus, God, walked on water in the midst of the storm that so upset the disciples in the boat. What a wonderful metaphor that is of how our God will walk with us in the midst of all the storms of life on this earth, the NCL. Job was struggling – very understandably. But by the grace of God he had some idea that he was not alone. In all his mood swings, God was with him. He might despair for the moment but that despair would pass because God was with him. That’s the way it is with us – if we are prepared to recognize it.

 

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Psalm On Demand - Psalm 59

Psalm 59

For the Chief Musician. To the tune of “Do Not Destroy.” A poem by David, when Saul sent, and they watched the house to kill him.

59:1 Deliver me from my enemies, my God.

Set me on high from those who rise up against me.

59:2 Deliver me from the workers of iniquity.

Save me from the bloodthirsty men.

59:3 For, behold, they lie in wait for my soul.

The mighty gather themselves together against me,

 not for my disobedience, nor for my sin, Yahweh.

59:4 I have done no wrong, yet they are ready to attack me.

Rise up, behold, and help me!

59:5 You, Yahweh God of Armies, the God of Israel,

rouse yourself to punish the nations.

Show no mercy to the wicked traitors.

Selah

59:6 They return at evening, howling like dogs,

and prowl around the city.

59:7 Behold, they spew with their mouth.

Swords are in their lips, “For,” they say, “who hears us?”

59:8 But you, Yahweh, laugh at them.

You scoff at all the nations.

59:9 Oh, my Strength, I watch for you,

for God is my high tower.

59:10 My God will go before me with his loving kindness.

God will let me look at my enemies in triumph.

59:11 Don’t kill them, or my people may forget.

Scatter them by your power, and bring them down, Lord our shield.

59:12 For the sin of their mouth,

and the words of their lips,

let them be caught in their pride,

for the curses and lies which they utter.

59:13 Consume them in wrath.

Consume them, and they will be no more.

Let them know that God rules in Jacob, to the ends of the earth.

Selah

 

59:14 At evening let them return.

Let them howl like a dog, and go around the city.

59:15 They shall wander up and down for food,

and wait all night if they aren’t satisfied.

59:16 But I will sing of your strength.

Yes, I will sing aloud of your loving kindness in the morning.

For you have been my high tower,

a refuge in the day of my distress.

59:17 To you, my strength, I will sing praises.

For God is my high tower, the God of my mercy.

 

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Job - Why God? - Part 2

Study 2 : Job 3, 4, 6, 8

Job finds his voice; he and his friends argue.

 

The pattern of the book is simple. Within the frame given by the prose of the first two and the last chapters and following an opening speech from Job there are 3 cycles of speeches: Eliphaz, Job,  Bildad, Job, Zophar, Job and round twice more. That should be 3x6 = 18 speeches but the last speech of Zophar is lost, perhaps deliberately to show the answers are incomplete.

The next chapter after these cycles of speeches (28) is a poem to Wisdom. That is followed by a speech of Job and a lengthy rant by a 4^th guy, Elihu. Only then do we hear from the Lord God himself, pointing out how Job has failed to understand what has happened and to learn from it. Then, finally, there is an epilogue, probably drawn from the old tale, which is used to teach one final fundamental lesson about life.

The poetic dialogue begins after those first 2 chapters of prose we thought about last time. Job expresses his total horror at what has happened to him in chapter 3; his first friend, Eliphaz, tries to analyze what has happened to him; Job replies and then a second friend Bildad speaks, expressing his view of Job’s problems more openly and clearly than Eliphaz did. I will read chapter 3, then a little of what Eliphaz said in chapter 4,  and part of Job’s reply, then we will skip to what Bildad says in chapter 8 and Job’s reply.

Here is Job’s lament in chapter 3: 1 - 19. Note how striking the poetry is.

All that is very understandable. There is next to no sign in the Old Testament that they had any idea of a life after death except a descent to Sheol for an experience they knew nothing about. The NT is very different. There we find statements like “longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up in life” in 2 Cor 5: 4.

Question: why the difference between the OT ideas and those of the NT? What should our reaction be?

Answer: of course this all hinges on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “Death is swallowed up in victory” as Paul says. We know that we should never share these negative attitudes of Job whatever happens to us in this life.

At this point I will skip to the next chapter because the last few verses of that chapter do not add much to the argument of the book. I will be doing this through these studies, picking out the most interesting and important bits of the book. That isn’t to say that it is not worth reading it all. It is. Here then is Job 4:1–9.

Eliphaz asks a very sharp and important question to all those of us who make a Christian profession. “Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope.” In other words he is asking whether Job was righteous just because it was the best thing to be from his point of view. Are we Christians because this is the best option – we can live more comfortable lives as Christians, or as sometime Christians (when it suits us) - we can keep the family happy – it sounds good in the community – we want to go to heaven when we die?

Question: are you a Christian for these or any other selfish ‘you based’ reasons.

Answer: the answer is yours, obviously. We should be Christian - we should be following Jesus -because we feel compelled to do so by who he is and what he has done for us, oblivious to our own immediate comforts. 200 years ago those who went on mission to the west coast of Africa lived on average for only a few months before they caught one of the lethal diseases of that area to which they had no natural immunity. They did not consider themselves, their own comforts and even their own lives, as of any significant account in the service of the King. Neither should we.

Eliphaz continues in 4: 12 – 21. In a very striking passage he says he has had a dream which introduces the idea that will persist throughout all the speeches of all Job’s four friends (if friends they can be called) that Job must have done some thing very wicked for all this to have happened to him.

Part of Job’s reply is in chapter 6: 2 - 4, 14 – 17, 21 – 30. That brings a reply from his second friend Bildad in chapter 8.

It is now clear that the friends, and even Job himself, are working from the assumption that bad things only happen to bad people. Therefore Job must be in so much trouble because he is a bad person, having undisclosed sin in his life, which he is hiding from them and even from himself. We know what they don’t know, that that is not the case. Job has experienced all his troubles only as a result of what the author has described as a discussion in the heavenly counsel. Or in other words he is experiencing what I called the NCL, the normal chaos of life. We have to accept that sometimes things just happen for no reason that we can discern. Sometimes things happen because of other people – it was the Sabeans and the Chaldeans that stole all Job’s huge herds of oxen, donkeys and camels. But sometimes it is natural forces - it was lightning and storm that killed his sheep, his servants and his children.

That is our experience too. Some of the chaos of life we experience is because other people, unwittingly or deliberately, have disturbed the even progress of our existence. Some of the chaos is because of all sorts of natural things, tsunamis and storms, illness and accident, which may have deeply affected our lives.

That is the way the world is – for us as for Job. We don’t know why the world is this way, why it is so full of chaos, though we may think that a world in which there were no storms, no winds, no floods, would be a very boring and uninteresting place. God, the Lord has never promised to protect us from such things. He has promised to protect us through them. Isaiah said, speaking for the Lord to his people,

” When you pass through the waters,
 / I will be with you;


and when you pass through the rivers, / they will not sweep over you.


When you walk through the fire,
 / you will not be burned;
 / the flames will not set you ablaze.

For I am the Lord your God,
 / the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour;

 

He does not say I will help you to avoid the rivers and dodge the fires. But when you are in them, battling with them, I will be with you.

Job will eventually understand, by the end of the book, but he is not there yet. He does not understand about the NCL – the normal chaos of life; nor does he realise that the CEP does not work – there is no cause/effect principle operating in moral and ethical life. Our piety does not protect us from what Job calls ‘the arrows of the Almighty’ in chapter 6 (which possibly gave rise to Shakespeare’s phrase ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’.)

 

Jesus clearly agrees. When told about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. He says ‘Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them – do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.’

 

We simply have to accept that the world we are in, the created world, created by our loving God, is subject to the Normal Chaos of Life and that no Principle of Cause/Effect  operates.

 

Too many people, too many Christians, try to convince themselves that there is no such thing as NCL. They say that the Lord is in control so there cannot be chaos. He is indeed in control but we do not know what he is doing, or why, so we are far better to accept that it looks like chaos to us and get on with living in our chaotic looking world.

 

Too many people, too many Christians, think that the CEP does operate and get very upset, sometimes even losing their faith, when it doesn’t work the way they think it should. They say things like ‘my lovely son or daughter died – life’s not fair – so I can’t believe in God any more.’ Why do they do that? He never promised a CEP. Why should he be blamed when it is clear there isn’t one?

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Job - Why God? - Part 1

Study 1 : Job 1 - 2

Terrible disasters hit Job. The book of Job is totally fascinating – but difficult. It is deeply concerned with the question of wisdom – how does one live well – but we will leave consideration of that to later in our studies when the question rises to the surface.


In particular the book deals with the questions that arise when disaster strikes. There are no clear answers to the questions it poses. Instead there are lengthy dialogues between Job and his three friends, then between him and a rather brash young fellow and only finally with God. We are left to think and puzzle over what is said and draw our own conclusions rather than treating it as an authoritative text that tells us things we should believe or do. One commentator says “we need to be transparent about the hazards of being human and teach the full witness of Scripture, which is messy, complex and, ultimately, wonderfully true.” That is nowhere more the case than in the book of Job. This is an attempt to teach that full witness as we are given it in this book.

Job Chapter 1

What a situation! Before looking at it in any detail here is an overview of what is to come.

The book tackles two major questions in particular:
Question 1: why is it not true that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. A Psalmist realised that when he said “For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills. This is what the wicked are like –
 always free of care, they go on amassing wealth. Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure
 and have washed my hands in innocence”


Then the major question 2) is: how can it be that our world, and our life in it, is subject to so much chaos.


It also raises two other questions that follow from those two: 3) how can we live wisely in this difficult environment and 4) how can we trust in the reliability of God if he presides over such an erratic world.


We will not get complete and totally satisfactory answers to those questions but we will be forced to think through our attitudes towards them and come to a deeper appreciation of this world we live in and the God who created and now controls it.


Question 1 revolves round one false idea that was common in those days and is still very common today. That is that everything that happens to us has a moral cause behind it leading to the effect we see. We will call this a CEP – cause/effect principle. It suggests that if I am good only good things will happen to me; if I am bad then bad things will happen to me. That leads to commonly heard statements like “he didn’t deserve that”, implying that something terrible has happened to an essentially good person and that it shouldn’t have done. The CEP does, of course, operate in the physical world: if you put salt in water you get salt water; if you kick the table leg you will get a bruised toe. The book of Job teaches us that a principle like that does not operate in the moral and ethical world.


Question 2 revolves around what we will call the NCL – normal chaos of life. Many Christians would query use of the word chaos in relation to the way the world works but it does seem to be the right word to use in this book. We will question the use of it more closely in study 9. As we shall see the book of Job teaches us that life is not well ordered. It hasn’t been since the Creation. However difficult it may be to accept that God did not create a neat and well ordered world but one that appears to us to be a thoroughly erratic one that is what he did and we have to live in it.


To move on to the detail of chapter 1, here it is.


Job was probably a real person who gave rise to many stories. He lived in the Middle East, but not in Israel, sometime about the same time as Abraham. The book was written by an Israelite much later, probably about 700 BC possibly using an old beginning and the end as a frame into which he put the lengthy poetical dialogue which is the main part of the book. The obvious intention was to do something to answer some of the questions raised by the old tale. We will look at selected sections of the book, not all of it, which can be thought a bit repetitive.


The Satan of this chapter is not the devil of later books of the Bible. He is a member of the Angelic Council (1: 6). He is the Accuser, the prosecuting counsel before the Lord, a sort of Attorney-General so we are straight into a courtroom type of thinking. We shall soon find that much of the book is concerned with Job wanting a judicial review of his case. He wants to be able to argue his case before the Lord.

Chapter 2

The challenge and counter-challenge between the Lord and the Satan in these first 2 chapters are curious to our eyes. The point in that culture is that if Job does not love God for his own sake, but for what he can get out of it, the honour of God is severely damaged. He would be shamed. To explain that: if a woman loves a man, not for his own sake but because he is rich we – in the Western world anyway – would not think well of the woman. But in this ancient culture it would bring more shame on the man. Similarly if Job does not love God for his, God’s sake, that brings shame on God rather more than on Job.

I’m going to ask some questions, pause briefly to let you think about them – and possibly use the pause button to do so – then pass comments on them.



Question: Some people’s first reaction to extreme trauma would be like Job’s; tearing his robe’s and shaving his head (but perhaps not worshipping as Job did). Stop and think for a moment: how would you react to extreme trauma? Would you let everyone know about your grief or would you bottle it all up inside? How long for? Would this be a healthy thing to do?

Answer: Of course I don’t know what your reaction would be. Possibly you don’t either as we often don’t know ourselves very well in situations like this until we actually experience them. The way we react to such things is very dependent on the culture of our society. Westerners tend to bottle things up. Other cultures are often more open about grief and better at sharing it.



Question: Which of the 3 friends actions here would you think most helpful to Job? How would you act in such a situation? How should you act?

Answer: Their silent sharing of his grief would most helpful to him. There would be a great temptation to say all the culturally approved things, many of which are not very helpful. It is a great gift to be able to say truly helpful things in a situation like this.



The Lord said to the Accuser “you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.”



Question: What are the implications of that statement? What does it tell us?

Answer: all things are in the hands of the Lord, both good and bad. The Bible never teaches the existence of a good God and a bad Satan, or nature, or anything with a power that God does not control. Even when Paul talks about “the devil’s schemes. … the powers of this dark world … the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. … and the evil one” he is talking about powers that are acting only with the express permission of the Lord God. That is hard to understand, but it is the way the Bible speaks of such things throughout.

The most stunning statement in these chapters is Job’s reaction to what has happened: the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.

Question: What does this tell us about Job’s view of God and his relationship to him – and therefore of what ours should be?
Answer: Job had a deep sense of relationship with God that had not been shaken by the appalling external events. For those of us (Westerners in particular) who are encouraged to seek our own good before anything and everything else, thus doing things like divorcing a spouse who no longer seems best for us, this approach to our own gratification is a fundamentally important lesson.

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God Gets His Hands Dirty 14

God Gets His Hands Dirty

14. Why is He called Jesus?

 

With all that has been said in this series so far, ask yourself this question in relation to Jesus: “What’s in a name?” I wonder what your name means. Parents usually name their children after the hopes and aspirations they have for that child. For example, the name John means “the gift of God”. I know somebody called Grace, and her nature is that of somebody full of grace. My name of David means “beloved” and when my parents named me, it was meant to symbolize the love they had for me.

But what does the name Jesus mean? When Jesus was born, his very name imbued the reason he was born. The name Jesus as we discovered in an earlier message means “Saviour” or “One who saves or rescues.” The entirety of His birth, life and death was centred on this very role - saving and rescuing all those who would believe, receive and follow Him. We have seen in the testimony of the Apostles John, Peter and Paul how Jesus came to save sinners, to call people to follow, believe and receive Himself! This Jesus who proclaimed He was the only way to God!

Jesus’ conception and birth were extraordinary at every level. So important is our understanding of his birth that, according to the Gospel accounts, no fewer than 4 angels came to give a full picture of the event. Do you think that his parents, Joseph & Mary, ever gazed upon him, and thought “How misnamed He is”! They did not, because they knew the very purpose for which He was born. This Jesus, Jesus Christ of Nazareth, is the most talked about person in history. Almost everyone has an opinion about Him. Jesus was born to confirm God's promises, to reveal God as a Father, and to be our representative before Him. Jesus gave us an example of how to live a holy life to the full. Jesus was not merely a man who received some special power. Jesus was not some strange creation that was half man and half God, with his human nature somehow absorbed into the divine. He was, as we shall see in the coming studies, much more than those ideas – Jesus was fully God and fully human!

Jesus came to serve all others and not to be served! Jesus came in order to call others to a life of following, receiving and believing in Him! Jesus came to reconcile people back into a peaceful and dynamic relationship with God by means of shedding his blood on the cross! Jesus trusted God to raise Him from the dead – and he did! Jesus – resurrected, ascended, glorified and exalted! Jesus Christ, the saviour of the world. Jesus Christ, who proclaimed “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Jesus is a name, which is especially sweet and precious to believers. It has often done them good. It has given them what money cannot buy - that is, inward peace. It has eased their wearied consciences and given rest to their heavy hearts. The Song of Solomon describes the experience of many, when it says, "Your name is oil poured forth" (Song of Solomon 1:3). Happy is the person who trusts not merely in vague notions of God's mercy and goodness, but in "Jesus." Jesus proclaimed by the Apostle John, Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul as the saviour and rescuer of the world – just as his name Jesus means! I am bound to ask is Jesus your saviour and rescuer? Are you following, believing and receiving Him?

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God Gets His Hands Dirty 13

God Gets His Hands Dirty

13. Jesus’ Kingdom

 

¹ A day of the Lord is coming, Jerusalem, when your possessions will be plundered and divided up within your very walls.
² I will gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half of the city will go into exile, but the rest of the people will not be taken from the city. ³ Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights on a day of battle. ⁴ On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem, and the Mount of Olives will be split in two from east to west, forming a great valley, with half of the mountain moving north and half moving south. ⁵ You will flee by my mountain valley, for it will extend to Azel. You will flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come, and all the holy ones with him. (Zechariah 14:1-5)

As we saw in Isaiah 61 to 63, God has commenced doing a good thing through the Servant Messiah. At His first coming as a baby, this Servant Messiah ushered in the Year of the Lord’s favour. We live in that period of time now, and it will continue until the Servant Messiah, Jesus Christ, comes again in glory and majesty. He will take those obedient followers to the City of God. For those who reject Him and the free offer of God’s grace, there is the Day of Vengeance. Now in Zechariah 14, we get a different perspective. We get a vision of the Kingdom of God at that tie in the future. So let us take a flight with Zechariah, into the future to see what this Messiah’s Kingdom is like. Where Jerusalem is mentioned, is in fact talking about the New Jerusalem, the City of God!

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