Doug McMasters: Can you hear me now?
Doug McMasters: How's that?
Doug McMasters: Is that better?
Doug McMasters: Let's take our Bible and go over to the book of Job.
Doug McMasters: Book of Job.
Doug McMasters: How many of you have ever heard a sermon series on the book of Job?
Doug McMasters: Huh, two, three, four.
Doug McMasters: How long was that series?
Doug McMasters: How many of you do your devotions in the book of Job?
Doug McMasters: Nobody raised their hand for that one, sometimes.
Doug McMasters: Okay, yeah, well, this Old Testament book was a popular book in the hands of many great preachers.
Doug McMasters: John Calvin preached 156 sermons on the book of Job.
Doug McMasters: Spurgeon preached 88 sermons on the book of Job, but both of them were outdone by another guy by the name of Joseph Carroll.
Doug McMasters: Joseph was a Puritan who suffered in many ways, and there are published 12 volumes of his commentaries or his preaching on the book of Job.
Doug McMasters: Just to give you a feel for how voluminous that is, there's one volume that covers chapters 1 to 3.
Doug McMasters: It's 21 sermons and it's 516 pages.
Doug McMasters: Just the first three chapters Chapters 18 to 21, 42 sermons, 886 pages, not to be outdone, chapters 32 to 34, 49 sermons and 916 pages.
Doug McMasters: So here's 111 sermons on only 10 of the chapters of the book of Job that cover over 2,500 pages.
Doug McMasters: Well, I'm certainly not going to mimic Joseph Carroll tonight, even though you might think I am by the time I finish.
Doug McMasters: You might think, well, he came close to that.
Doug McMasters: But I hope by the end of the evening you'll appreciate the book of Job more and that you will even look to it as a resource, just like Calvin did and Carol did and Spurgeon did.
Doug McMasters: And another guy that I haven't mentioned, durham Charles Spurgeon, said this.
Doug McMasters: He said if you are depressed, read the book of Job.
Doug McMasters: Some of Job's remarks were terrible, but who could doubt Job's salvation or his redemption Today?
Doug McMasters: His name is one of the most illustrious of those who have overcome the world by faith.
Doug McMasters: It's quite a remarkable commendation, right.
Doug McMasters: Well, tonight I want to give you seven points about the book of Job.
Doug McMasters: They all begin with the letter P, so just listen for those P words and count them up, and hopefully I get through all seven of them.
Doug McMasters: First of all, it's the place of Job.
Doug McMasters: The place of Job.
Doug McMasters: Last week Mike took us through the book of Esther.
Doug McMasters: Tonight, here we are in the middle of the Old Testament as constructed by our Christian Bible, middle of the Old Testament as constructed by our Christian Bible, and we begin to examine a series of what's known as poetic books that deal with things about everyday life, personal relationships, money, love, doubt, prayer and suffering.
Doug McMasters: And once you step into the book of Job, you realize having just come out of the book of Esther.
Doug McMasters: You're in a completely different place.
Doug McMasters: God is dealing with us in a different way in this book.
Doug McMasters: Unlike the other books that we've studied, job doesn't focus on God's dealings with the nation of Israel.
Doug McMasters: There's no reference to the Exodus, no reference to the covenantodus, no reference to the covenant, no reference to the torah, no reference to the prophets, no reference to the day of the lord, and in that way we can see that joe belongs in that little group with proverbs and ecclesiastes and song of Solomon.
Doug McMasters: Those books don't deal with God's acts in history, but on the questions about the world itself and everyday life within it.
Doug McMasters: Now, don't be mistaken All the books that we've looked at deal with life and everyday life within it, but Job and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon approached the question in a different way.
Doug McMasters: Instead of appealing to the way God acted in history, it appeals to the way life itself is.
Doug McMasters: And so Job, like those other books, reflects on the nature of everyday human experience.
Doug McMasters: It deals with God, morality as part of that human experience.
Doug McMasters: But in order to understand life with God and how to live life in light of God, we have these books because it helps us understand how life actually and should work, and so that's why these books are sometimes referred to us as wisdom literature.
Doug McMasters: Have you heard that phrase, wisdom literature?
Doug McMasters: It's because these books bring up those terms quite frequently wisdom and insight.
Doug McMasters: The whole Bible certainly is concerned about wisdom and insight, but these books are isolated out.
Doug McMasters: It's called wisdom literature, and the reason is is because it deals with things in two different ways.
Doug McMasters: It talks about, on the one hand, life with all of its rules and regularities, that these are the things that should be expected about life and that often are patterns of life.
Doug McMasters: This is how things normally work and how life probably ought to work.
Doug McMasters: And yet, on the other hand, it also deals with another side to life, that our human experiences don't often fit into those patterns or those rules, that there are as many exceptions to the rules as there are rules themselves.
Doug McMasters: Proverbs and the Song of Solomon deal with the rules.
Doug McMasters: Ecclesiastes and Job deal with the exceptions.
Doug McMasters: Song of Solomon.
Doug McMasters: The race is not always to the swift.
Doug McMasters: The battle is not always to the strong, the exceptions, the exceptions.
Doug McMasters: So, in order to understand Job, we have to understand its place within the poetic books and the wisdom literature, that it focuses on experiences that call into question the rules.
Doug McMasters: And that leads us to the pattern of Job, because what we find when we get into the book of Job is the experience of a man that doesn't fit the rules.
Doug McMasters: In fact, that's the whole thesis of the book.
Doug McMasters: It tells a story about a man who is totally committed to God, with the expectation that his life would continue to be prosperous.
Doug McMasters: However, his life falls apart through a series of catastrophes, but eventually is reestablished.
Doug McMasters: And so it discusses these questions in the form of a play, which I think is a wonderful, wonderful construct, a pattern of how it's developed, because, in the sense of a play, we're brought into different arenas to capture information, while allowing there to be a separation of understanding in those two places the arena of heaven, the conversation of God with Satan, totally unknown to Job and his friends in this situation on earth.
Doug McMasters: And it allows for there to be this interplay of Job with his three friends, and then Elihu later on, and then with God himself, to be able to posit what they think are the rules by which the reality is happening and to be able to offer their explanations of what's going on in Job's life without us necessarily hearing a comment of whether those things are right or wrong at first.
Doug McMasters: So chapter 1 and 2, just to give us a bit of that pattern introduces us to a rich and a powerful man, but a thoroughly good man by the name of Job, suddenly stripped of his possessions, his family, his high place in society and even his physical health, all seemingly as the result of this bet that Satan makes with God that you take away all of those blessings, job will turn his face against God and curse him.
Doug McMasters: Chapters 3 to 27 bring us into a lengthy argument that Job has with three of his friends.
Doug McMasters: They come at first to Job in order to give him some comfort, but they end up insisting that Job is a bad man who justifiably deserves the evil he's received.
Doug McMasters: Joseph Carroll summed up their argument this way the whole dispute and argument of Job's friends may be reduced to one syllogism he that is greatly afflicted is certainly either a great and open sinner or a vile hypocrite.
Doug McMasters: That's the rule.
Doug McMasters: Job, you're afflicted.
Doug McMasters: Therefore, you are certainly an unprincipled hypocrite, if not an open sinner.
Doug McMasters: That's their argument.
Doug McMasters: Job, just as certainly as they are, says this is just not the case, and he stubbornly defends his righteousness.
Doug McMasters: Chapter 28 leads us into an interlude about wisdom, a song to the praise of wisdom, a hint of something that's about to happen.
Doug McMasters: Chapters 29 to 31, joe presents his last case.
Doug McMasters: He asked God to show him, to show his friends, to show the world any wrong that he might be guilty of.
Doug McMasters: That would warrant what he's received.
Doug McMasters: And just as we think we're going to hear the answer to Job's final argument, the tension builds with this interjection of Elihu in chapters 32 to 37.
Doug McMasters: A man who's been listening to the debate and begins to form his own opinions about what's going on and now purposes to give a rather wordy, lengthy exposition of where he thinks Job is wrong, and his friends too.
Doug McMasters: And then, right near the end of the book, chapter 38 to 41, after all of these circles and cycles of conversation back and forth, we finally hear the Lord speak and some of the mystery is unraveled for us Enough for Job to humble himself.
Doug McMasters: And then, in chapter 42, job is declared totally restored.
Doug McMasters: His three friends, however, are ordered to repent and to ask Job to offer sacrifices for their sins, job is vindicated.
Doug McMasters: So, with that place and with that pattern, let's now look a little bit more deeply at the people of Job.
Doug McMasters: The people of Job, the chief characters of the book of Job.
Doug McMasters: Most of them arise in chapters 1 and 2.
Doug McMasters: Job, god, satan and Job's three friends, eliphaz the Temanite, bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite.
Doug McMasters: And then another person, elihu, shows up later.
Doug McMasters: Job obviously the book gets its title from the main character, man, who is described as living in the land of Uz, which could be on the opposite side of the Jordan River, and he's described as the greatest of all the people of the East.
Doug McMasters: We learn that he's a wealthy man, a very wealthy and powerful man who would have been every bit the equal of Bill Gates or Elon Musk in our day.
Doug McMasters: He's that wealthy, he's that powerful.
Doug McMasters: But that wealth is only mentioned in passing because the Bible and if you will go to chapter one, lands somewhere else in highlighting who Job is, it's his character that matters the most, not his cash.
Doug McMasters: And in verse one we find that he's a man of complete integrity, and the word that's used there talks about him being whole.
Doug McMasters: Whole, that's what integrity is.
Doug McMasters: There's no rip or tear or shard in this man's character.
Doug McMasters: There's no rough places or broken places.
Doug McMasters: He's a man of integrity.
Doug McMasters: Morally he is as God would want us to be.
Doug McMasters: There's a simplicity, our wholeness about him.
Doug McMasters: What you see with Job is what you get.
Doug McMasters: He is by no means a hypocrite, as he's going to be accused a little bit later.
Doug McMasters: There's a consistency, a truthfulness, a moral direction, an integrity, a wholeness about his life.
Doug McMasters: Now the Christian Standard Bible pulls two words into one, but there's a second Hebrew word there which is related to that, which means straight.
Doug McMasters: We see the translation complete integrity.
Doug McMasters: But there's a little bit of the wholeness and the straightness, two very similar words but can be teased apart a little bit.
Doug McMasters: It overlaps with the integrity part.
Doug McMasters: The Old Testament pictures the righteous person walking down a path straight, going down, not turning to the left, not turning to the right, but just on the pathway.
Doug McMasters: One that goes off of the path is a wayward person.
Doug McMasters: That's not Job.
Doug McMasters: He's a straight walker.
Doug McMasters: He goes down the path of righteousness.
Doug McMasters: God has laid out a straight, moral path in front of him and he's been walking down it.
Doug McMasters: We also see that he's a submissive man.
Doug McMasters: He's a man of complete integrity who feared God.
Doug McMasters: We hear the word fear and sometimes we conjure up in our mind that idea of being afraid of God.
Doug McMasters: But then there's the Old Testament understanding of it.
Doug McMasters: It also speaks about fear, with the sense of submission and reverence and respect rather than negative cowering and fear and respect rather than negative cowering and fear.
Doug McMasters: It's this positive attitude that's being attributed to Job, and the scriptures tell us if you want to be a person who is upright, if you want to be a person who's morally whole, the place to start is here.
Doug McMasters: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Doug McMasters: That sense of submissiveness, reverence, respect and awe of God is the beginning place.
Doug McMasters: And then we see he's a man who turns away from evil.
Doug McMasters: He's a man of complete integrity who fears God, who turns away from evil.
Doug McMasters: Once again, it shows us this idea of him staying on the right pathway, but he also avoids the wrong pathway, and so his attitudes to life and his relationship to God go together.
Doug McMasters: This is Job an upright man, a straight walking man, a respecter of God man, an avoider of evil man.
Doug McMasters: In the beginning of this book shows us some of the fruitfulness of that.
Doug McMasters: He's a man with a bounty in life a full family, seeming enjoying all that there is about this, and as one of the great examples of this fulfillment and this gratitude toward God is a deep enjoyment over grown children.
Doug McMasters: It's a remarkable thing.
Doug McMasters: That's one character, job.
Doug McMasters: The second character we're introduced to is God.
Doug McMasters: There's a lot to say about God in this, so I just want to bring out one unique highlight that's often overlooked here.
Doug McMasters: In the first two chapters of the book of Job, god is referenced to with his covenant name, yahweh, the Lord.
Doug McMasters: That is the name that speaks of his faithfulness, his grace and his love.
Doug McMasters: But once you get past the first two chapters of the book of Job, something dramatic happens.
Doug McMasters: The covenant name of God, yahweh, is not used at all in the dialogue that Job and his friends have together.
Doug McMasters: What we get instead is Elohim, that sort of common name for God in the ancient world.
Doug McMasters: We also get Shaddai, the Almighty.
Doug McMasters: Of the 48 times that the word Shaddai is used in the Old Testament, 31 of them are here in Job.
Doug McMasters: 31 of them are here in Job.
Doug McMasters: But when we get to the last part of the book of Job.
Doug McMasters: When God speaks to Job and Job replies to him, we find the covenant name of God returning.
Doug McMasters: What's going on here?
Doug McMasters: This early part and the latter part represent God as he's made himself known to Job God as his Lord, god as his faithful one, god as the lover of his soul, god as the one who is heaping blessings upon his life, enriching him and honoring his servant, keeping his faithful love on this man.
Doug McMasters: But when Job suffers and begins to consider his suffering, he now meets God by another name.
Doug McMasters: He meets God with another face, and it's this change from the lover of my soul to the Almighty that is part of the disturbing echoes in Job's heart and it's driving him to madness.
Doug McMasters: What was once a relationship full of love and blessing is now a relationship that seems to be full of wrath and cursing.
Doug McMasters: And for Job this is intolerable.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't understand it.
Doug McMasters: For his friends, nothing's changed.
Doug McMasters: The problem is, job had only been given a temporary sense of the blessings of this world.
Doug McMasters: But the reality of who Job is from the Almighty is coming out.
Doug McMasters: But for Job, everything's changed.
Doug McMasters: Everything has changed.
Doug McMasters: He's completely perplexed, he's distraught, he's to the point of being incoherent.
Doug McMasters: How can the Lord, my covenant-keeping God be the one who's now cast me here.
Doug McMasters: It can't be that I'm dealing with a different deity.
Doug McMasters: He doesn't go there, but yet he can't reconcile these two pictures of God, and that causes his deep agony.
Doug McMasters: And the question is can he cling to his previous understanding of the Lord in the middle of his present distresses?
Doug McMasters: Can he we walk with him through that tension?
Doug McMasters: Now, people struggle all the time with what we call theodicy, the justification of God, all the time with what we call theodicy, the justification of God.
Doug McMasters: And usually the questions raised are about whether God really wants to prevent situations in our life.
Doug McMasters: Is God actually good at all, or is he able to intervene and bring about good and to stop the evil, that is, is God powerful or sovereign?
Doug McMasters: Well, job clearly affirms that God is both good and sovereign, and yet evil still happens.
Doug McMasters: The author of Job affirms God's sovereignty over all that suffering, and even Job, when he lost his livestock, affirms God's sovereignty over all that suffering.
Doug McMasters: And even Job, when he lost his livestock, when he lost his servants, when he lost his children, he said the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
Doug McMasters: Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Doug McMasters: And the divine commentary from the narrator is in all this, job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
Doug McMasters: And then when Job loses his health and his wife calls on him to curse God, job says shall we receive good from God and not receive evil?
Doug McMasters: And again the narrator immediately interjects in chapter two and verse 10, in all this, job did not sin with his lips.
Doug McMasters: Job affirms that God is a creator, job affirms that God is sovereign.
Doug McMasters: But what he can't understand is how the one God could have two different names like this.
Doug McMasters: Until he gets to the end and he says in chapter 42, I know that you, the Lord, can do all things and that none of your purposes can be thwarted.
Doug McMasters: The Almighty is Yahweh.
Doug McMasters: It's one of the big lessons.
Doug McMasters: Another character that we learn about here is Satan.
Doug McMasters: After we're introduced to Job, all of a sudden we're brought into the throne room of heaven, where the myriads of angels crown around the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
Doug McMasters: What is this guy doing here?
Doug McMasters: Lurking in the divine court, this evil being?
Doug McMasters: Think about this for a second.
Doug McMasters: We hear Satan speak here.
Doug McMasters: There's only three instances and, like someone said, the fingerprints of Satan are all over the pages of Scripture, but there are only three places where we hear him talk.
Doug McMasters: One is in the Garden of Eden, the other one is in the temptation of Jesus and here and here is in the temptation of Jesus and here and here where he accuses a man before God.
Doug McMasters: What do we learn about him?
Doug McMasters: Well, we learn he's totally vicious in his intentions.
Doug McMasters: And he's asked where he's come from.
Doug McMasters: And he says roaming through the earth and walking around on it echoes of what Peter says about our enemy like a roaring lion walks to and fro through the earth seeking to whom he may devour right, there's a purposeful echo there.
Doug McMasters: He's vicious in his intentions.
Doug McMasters: He has no regard for God, no regard for God's servants.
Doug McMasters: He maligns God and he maligns God's people.
Doug McMasters: But we also learn something else about him that he's limited in his abilities.
Doug McMasters: When we read about him, it's important to notice that his attack on Job has to be cleared with the Lord first.
Doug McMasters: You may not understand all of that, but that part of it's a certainty.
Doug McMasters: Satan could not touch this good man unless God had first given him permission.
Doug McMasters: In fact, god is the one who said have you considered my servant Job?
Doug McMasters: And Job's like don't mention my name.
Doug McMasters: But he did Job's like don't, don't bet your money, but he did.
Doug McMasters: Satan is clearly not the free agent here, and there's a danger in Christian circles of being so preoccupied with the evil one that somehow we kind of cast him into this dualistic view with God.
Doug McMasters: Just as God is powerful for good, satan is powerful for evil, and we need to be afraid of them both one for good, one for evil.
Doug McMasters: When I was working at Grace to you, there was a lady who wrote a letter afraid of an operation on her body that she needed because she was told by her church that if they opened her up, it was an avenue of the entrance of evil spirits into her body.
Doug McMasters: Not only was it absolutely ridiculous, it also betrayed an utter lack of understanding of the power of God and the limited access that Satan has to any of us.
Doug McMasters: One thing else we learn about Satan he's an accuser.
Doug McMasters: Does Job fear God for nothing?
Doug McMasters: It's because of all this you've given him.
Doug McMasters: He loves you.
Doug McMasters: You take that away.
Doug McMasters: He won't.
Doug McMasters: Satan believes that no one would serve God out of any pure motive, out of any heart of love.
Doug McMasters: In his eyes, job only serves God for what he can get out of the relationship.
Doug McMasters: He believes that all humans are false and self-seeking.
Doug McMasters: Just like he is, watch out for what people accuse others of.
Doug McMasters: You'll often find that their accusations are but a mirror of their own heart.
Doug McMasters: Satan proposes a bet with the Lord let me have him.
Doug McMasters: I'll strip him of everything he has and see if he will not turn violently against you.
Doug McMasters: The Lord hands him over this unsuspecting Job to the tormentor, with restrictions, however.
Doug McMasters: Job loses his cattle, his flocks, his shepherds, his camels, their retainers, his sons, his daughters, their spouses.
Doug McMasters: And that's only the beginning.
Doug McMasters: The second attack he loses his physical health and his wife's trust.
Doug McMasters: It leads us to three more characters we discover here Eliphaz the Temanite, bildad the Shuhite, zophar the Naamathite that hear about the adversity of their friend, who come from their homes, gather together to sympathize and to comfort him.
Doug McMasters: They spend a week in silence as they listen to the moans and sobs of Job.
Doug McMasters: They're not insincere.
Doug McMasters: They really do care for their friend.
Doug McMasters: They've come from a long distance and they sit with him in the middle of his grief.
Doug McMasters: That's a friend right.
Doug McMasters: They're presented in a favorable light.
Doug McMasters: They're sensitive, seemingly compassionate to Job.
Doug McMasters: Their whole intention is to try to comfort him.
Doug McMasters: They seem to be good and earnest, and even religious men.
Doug McMasters: Their speeches start off well-meaning, even though they're striking and there's some of it in there meant to comfort Job, at least push him in what they thought was the right direction.
Doug McMasters: But their comfort becomes an irritant to Job.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because they were used to thinking of the way life normally ought to be, without exception.
Doug McMasters: Righteous men are blessed, sinful men are cursed.
Doug McMasters: Job, you're obviously in trouble.
Doug McMasters: You can't be a righteous man.
Doug McMasters: You have to be either a sinner or a hypocrite.
Doug McMasters: Which one are you?
Doug McMasters: As we think about that syllogism, as Carol talked about it, we realize that that one week of silence was the best thing that they could offer their friend.
Doug McMasters: They meet together, they approach Job, they find this common strategy to try to get Job to admit that he's done something wrong.
Doug McMasters: Get Job to admit that he's done something wrong.
Doug McMasters: Retribution, reward, punishment, all of those things as rules drives their thinking.
Doug McMasters: Are they right?
Doug McMasters: We might read some scriptures and think that they are.
Doug McMasters: No harm befalls the righteous, but the wicked have their fill of trouble.
Doug McMasters: Proverbs 12, 21.
Doug McMasters: We might think well, there's a rule here Righteous are rewarded, the wicked are cursed.
Doug McMasters: But that's not the whole truth of Scripture.
Doug McMasters: There's something else that Scripture tells us here that life is far too complex to be pushed into that simplistic explanation.
Doug McMasters: Psalm 73.
Doug McMasters: The psalmist realized that there was something going on beyond this clear this-than-that way of thinking.
Doug McMasters: I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
Doug McMasters: This is what the wicked are like.
Doug McMasters: They're carefree, they increase in wealth, and all the day long I'm being plagued.
Doug McMasters: What good is it to live for God, he says, until he considered something beyond life as he was looking at it.
Doug McMasters: That leads us to the final character that we want to look at the people of Job.
Doug McMasters: That's what I call this the people of Job, elihu.
Doug McMasters: After all these rounds of arguments and defense, we get to the point in chapter 31 where we expect that the Lord is going to answer Job.
Doug McMasters: Job's thrown down the gauntlet.
Doug McMasters: It seems like it's impossible for God to remain silent.
Doug McMasters: God's been put into the box.
Doug McMasters: Defend yourself, god.
Doug McMasters: And all of a sudden someone else steps in the way, and it's Elihu.
Doug McMasters: He's been listening in on the debate and he interjects himself without any invitation, and boy has he got something to say.
Doug McMasters: He's the most long-winded of all the speakers in Job.
Doug McMasters: He uses twice as much space as any of the other speakers in Job.
Doug McMasters: This guy keeps droning on and it seems, as he talks, that some of these guys are trying to interject, but Elihu shuts them down and keeps on talking.
Doug McMasters: He's not going to give space once he's gotten the platform to talk to anybody.
Doug McMasters: Some people think that Elihu gave some new insight into the situation, but I think there's a case for saying he did nothing but repeat with longer words, exactly what Job's other three friends were saying that Job was being punished for the evil life.
Doug McMasters: So what is this?
Doug McMasters: Remember, this is a question dressed in a play, and what we have here is this unexpected interjection of a long-winded speaker that continues to build the tension of when is God going to talk?
Doug McMasters: When are we going to talk?
Doug McMasters: When are we going to hear somebody cut through the morass of all of this?
Doug McMasters: And so the suspense is built until the supreme moment of God's speech, and that leads us from the place of Job to the of Job, to the people of Job, to the poetry of Job.
Doug McMasters: I'm not going to spend time on this because my time is rapidly running away from me, but when you read Job, it's full of poetic structure.
Doug McMasters: You take a look at Go Past, chapter 2, and you can see it's built, even, the way it's typeset into a poetic structure.
Doug McMasters: It's because each of these verses are just a few major Hebrew words that are paralleled with the second part of the verse.
Doug McMasters: It's Hebrew parallelism.
Doug McMasters: It's poetic not only in its structure.
Doug McMasters: It's poetic in its succinctness.
Doug McMasters: These words are put out without a lot of sort of words that help round out the sentences, and there's a lot of poetic symbols there as well.
Doug McMasters: Well, job says the arrows of the almighty are in me, they're poison.
Doug McMasters: My spirit drinks up.
Doug McMasters: That's very poetic, right?
Doug McMasters: That's vivid imagery, and so it's meant to slow us down by some of its difficulty in understanding and some of its complexity in the images, so that we not only just read it, we feel it.
Doug McMasters: And that leads us to the poignancy of Job.
Doug McMasters: The poignancy of Job.
Doug McMasters: What we hear is Job speaking out of the bitterness of his heart.
Doug McMasters: We feel these struggles that he's crying over, we're moved by his sufferings that he experiences.
Doug McMasters: We capture the expressiveness of his anguish, and especially his spiritual anguish, as he tries to understand what's happened to him.
Doug McMasters: Let's go to chapter three for a second Chapter three.
Doug McMasters: Job is in such pain that he curses his birthday right On this day.
Doug McMasters: That would have risen up with his family and his neighbors all saying it's a boy.
Doug McMasters: He said I would rather there was nothing but silence on that day.
Doug McMasters: In fact, I would rather that you cast that day off the calendar.
Doug McMasters: Job when you were born.
Doug McMasters: Let me show you that there's no date.
Doug McMasters: There's literally no date on the calendar, verse 6.
Doug McMasters: If only darkness had taken that night away.
Doug McMasters: May it not appear among the days of the year be listed in the calendar.
Doug McMasters: Yes, may that night be barren.
Doug McMasters: May no joyful sound be heard in it.
Doug McMasters: He curses the day that he was born.
Doug McMasters: Erase it from the calendar, blot it out.
Doug McMasters: All that he enjoyed in his former life, the material fortune, the high place in society, the sweet enjoyment that he describes in chapter 29 as being drenched with cream and the rock pouring out from his streams of olive oil None of that.
Doug McMasters: None of that brings him any joy right now.
Doug McMasters: It's all been faded away in the present reality that's dominating his current thought.
Doug McMasters: And here he heaps line upon line, trying to pull together all the forces that would throw away his birthday into oblivion.
Doug McMasters: And he says in verse 8, may those who curse days curse that day.
Doug McMasters: In biblical days, professional mourners would come around a funeral and they would curse the day of someone's death as part of the funeral.
Doug McMasters: Right, job is saying I wish they'd rather curse the day of my birth, not the day of my death.
Doug McMasters: This is how bitter he is.
Doug McMasters: This is the poignancy of Job.
Doug McMasters: We feel it.
Doug McMasters: We don't just disinterestedly look at it.
Doug McMasters: And that leads us to the sixth point.
Doug McMasters: Not just the place and the pattern and the people, the poetry and the poignancy of Job, but the perplexing purpose of Job.
Doug McMasters: What's going on here?
Doug McMasters: Why was this written?
Doug McMasters: When we read the first two chapters, we might think that we're about to read a book that talks about the patience of a good man, but that's not what shows up in the rest of the book.
Doug McMasters: The questions that Job raises and the questions his friend raise and wrestle with are questions we all wrestle with.
Doug McMasters: Why me?
Doug McMasters: Why now, right, don't we ask those questions?
Doug McMasters: So there's been a lot of people who have put maybe some themes on Job.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it answers why the innocent suffer.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it's there to talk about the tragedy of life itself in a fallen world.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it's there to simply posit the perplexing nature of God with humanity.
Doug McMasters: Maybe it's there to show us the bankruptcy of a dead orthodoxy.
Doug McMasters: All of those things certainly say something true and can be found in Job.
Doug McMasters: But is that what it's about?
Doug McMasters: So many different ideas have been laid out here, this puzzling purpose of Job that some people say we shouldn't even be looking for a purpose at all.
Doug McMasters: But I think there is one the book of Job.
Doug McMasters: If it doesn't say anything else to us, it says this that there is not an inevitable link between an individual sin and their personal suffering.
Doug McMasters: Right Now, job doesn't give us a comprehensive answer as to why people suffer, but it does make it clear that there are many things besides a person's personal sin to explain their suffering.
Doug McMasters: And so this rule of retribution for wrong and reward for right Job knocks over Life is more complex than that.
Doug McMasters: It's inadequate as a comprehensive explanation of life in this world.
Doug McMasters: And so, as Job and his friends struggled to understand the reason for Job's suffering and they tried to identify reasons that they think he's suffering, they don't even get close to what we know as the readers of why it's all happened.
Doug McMasters: They've never been able to enter into chapter one and chapter two, the throne room of heaven and God and Satan's talk.
Doug McMasters: Not once does that idea enter even slightly into their imaginations.
Doug McMasters: All of their reasons are wrong.
Doug McMasters: Chapters 1 and 2 make it clear that there are aspects about reality that have a spiritual explanation, that are outside of our understanding.
Doug McMasters: And can you continue to trust a God who doesn't tell you the answer to your why?
Doug McMasters: That question continues to gnaw the human race.
Doug McMasters: John, chapter 9, disciples ask about a man born blind.
Doug McMasters: Who sinned, this man or his parents?
Doug McMasters: The rule, remember the rule Righteous reward, wrong retribution.
Doug McMasters: Who sinned?
Doug McMasters: What did Jesus say?
Doug McMasters: It was not this man who sinned, nor was it his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.
Doug McMasters: Can you trust God to have a better reason than you can understand?
Doug McMasters: So, all these lessons of Job revealing the character of God, guiding us to see his sovereign hand in the dealings in the world, this exposure of the reality and yet the limited reach of Satan, the comfort of God's people during their pilgrimage to give them some hope of something beyond life itself, which we'll get into in just a moment, all of these things are great and wonderful, but Job's doing something bigger than all of that.
Doug McMasters: Job is raising the question which we think demands an answer, but refuses to give it to us, because it wants to point us beyond our understanding, into a trust of a God who has passed our ability to control or to fully comprehend.
Doug McMasters: Can we trust him?
Doug McMasters: And that leads me to the last point, the prophetic nature of Job.
Doug McMasters: To the last point, the prophetic nature of Job.
Doug McMasters: And we can never treat any of the Bible as though Christ is never being pointed to in it.
Doug McMasters: Spurgeon said back when London was a lot smaller than I experienced, that in all the villages of Surrey, which is the county next to London, you'll find a London road in all of those villages.
Doug McMasters: Why?
Doug McMasters: Because all of those villages had a connecting pathway to the major city Right.
Doug McMasters: And so all the roads, he said in the Bible, lead to Christ.
Doug McMasters: All of them.
Doug McMasters: The book of Job leads to Christ.
Doug McMasters: What is the main point of the Bible?
Doug McMasters: The same as it is in every one of the books.
Doug McMasters: Listen to Job for a second as he yearns for someone to take up his case, a mediator, in Job 9 and verse 33.
Doug McMasters: But listen to his despair.
Doug McMasters: There's no mediator between us to lay his hand on us both.
Doug McMasters: Let him take his rod away from me so his terror will no longer frighten me.
Doug McMasters: I need a mediator to do that for me.
Doug McMasters: Then I would speak and not fear him.
Doug McMasters: But that is not the case and I am on my own.
Doug McMasters: If only Job is saying if only there was someone to stand in the middle between God and me, someone who could lay his hand on his bow, someone that would remove God's angry rod so his terrors wouldn't frighten me anymore.
Doug McMasters: But I don't have that.
Doug McMasters: I'm by myself, I'm doomed.
Doug McMasters: What is he calling for?
Doug McMasters: He's calling for what we in Christian language, theological language, call the theology of propit his behalf, and he knew that if he had that he'd be safe and wouldn't have to fear God's wrath anymore.
Doug McMasters: I need a mediator.
Doug McMasters: Do you hear an echo there?
Doug McMasters: Do you hear something in some wry, ironic way?
Doug McMasters: Now that we understand the fulfillment of the revelation of prophecy in the coming of Jesus Christ, do you hear it?
Doug McMasters: Of course you hear it.
Doug McMasters: But for Job that was still a wish, still a need.
Doug McMasters: We know that through faith in Christ, that God has presented him as a propitiation, that is, a sacrifice of atonement or satisfaction by his death.
Doug McMasters: Once you come to faith in Christ, you don't need to fear the terrors of God anymore.
Doug McMasters: There's no condemnation, the scriptures say to those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of sin and death has been taken by him.
Doug McMasters: Once you come to faith in Christ, you don't need to fear his terrors any longer.
Doug McMasters: But there's Job still in that place of saying I need one, I need one, I need one.
Doug McMasters: And if only we could scream across the centuries Job, there is right.
Doug McMasters: Well, hang on.
Doug McMasters: We're not done.
Doug McMasters: Yet.
Doug McMasters: Job speaks a little bit later.
Doug McMasters: That was chapter nine, chapter 17,.
Doug McMasters: We're not done yet.
Doug McMasters: Job speaks a little bit later.
Doug McMasters: That was chapter 9, chapter 17, verse 13.
Doug McMasters: His hopelessness is still sweeping over him.
Doug McMasters: If the only home I hope for is the grave, I spread out my bed in darkness.
Doug McMasters: If I say to corruption, you're my father, and to the worm, my mother, my sister, where's my hope?
Doug McMasters: Who can see any hope for me there?
Doug McMasters: Will it go down to the gates of death while we descend together in the dust?
Doug McMasters: Even if I die, I don't have hope.
Doug McMasters: Yes, I wished for my birthday never to have been, but now I realize even death's not really going to do it.
Doug McMasters: This is pretty depressing.
Doug McMasters: He's suffered great calamities, he's lost his wealth, he's lost his loved ones, he's lost his health, he's lost his respect, and here he's thinking about losing his life and there's still no hope.
Doug McMasters: Even death won't free him.
Doug McMasters: What could free him?
Doug McMasters: Listen to Job 19.
Doug McMasters: I know that my Redeemer lives and at the end he will stand on the dust, even after my skin has been destroyed.
Doug McMasters: Yet I will see God in my flesh.
Doug McMasters: I will see him myself.
Doug McMasters: My eyes will look at him, not as a stranger.
Doug McMasters: My heart longs within me.
Doug McMasters: I don't know to what degree Job fully understood what he had just said, but we understand what he just said.
Doug McMasters: He looked for a mediator that would give him not only freedom from the wrath of God, but freedom from the penalty of sin, death itself, to where he would be able to look his Redeemer face to face and not have any fear.
Doug McMasters: All of us, as believers in Christ, can say these words, not as a prophecy but as a hope.
Doug McMasters: I know my Redeemer lives.
Doug McMasters: I know that he paid the price to buy me out of sin, hell and death.
Doug McMasters: He stands, he's taken the rod of God's terrors away and in the end he has already stood on the other side of death on this earth and he's entered into heaven as Lord over all things, seen and unseen, visible and invisible, whether they be rulers or powers or dominions.
Doug McMasters: Certainly, if he's done that, he can destroy death.
Doug McMasters: If he's done that, he can destroy death and my skin, which has been destroyed in the grave, will be reconstituted to where I can stand, where he's standing, and I can see him with welcome.
Doug McMasters: We say that now, after the revelation and resurrection of Jesus Christ, now that Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits, the harvest of righteousness not our own, but based on his death is dead and it is now no longer an enemy but simply a portal, a portal from this world still captured by death and sorrow and misery and pain, into a place where there'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, because the former things will have passed away.
Doug McMasters: Job cried out in Job 9, if only there was a Redeemer, your heart might be longing for that.
Doug McMasters: Still, and I have to say from the revelation of the rest of God's Word, there is a Redeemer, there is a mediator, there is a mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
Doug McMasters: And you can say with the kind of confidence that only Job could hope for, I know my Redeemer, I know he lives and someday I will be with him, and this is why we can also take up the last words of Job that we'll hear tonight.
Doug McMasters: Though he slay me yet, I'll continue to trust in him.
Doug McMasters: I may not understand why he's putting me to death right now, but I know him and I know he's going to do something beyond my ability or my necessity to understand right now, and then, in that day, I'll know, even as also I'm known.
Doug McMasters: The mystery will not be forever.
Doug McMasters: Amen, let's pray, father.
Doug McMasters: Thank you for the book of Job.
Doug McMasters: Forgive us, father, for not understanding it as well as we ought, for living within it as often as we could, for living within it as often as we could.
Doug McMasters: We pray Father, however, though, that its truths, once discovered and realized and affirmed within us, might continue to give us a comforting understanding that you are God and we are not, that your ways are beyond our ways, as high as the heavens are above the earth, but that you're also good and great and that you are disposed to give us life through a mediator.
Doug McMasters: You gave us Jesus.
Doug McMasters: You gave us one who is both love and powerful, defeated death and defeats our sin, so that we might have a hope in you that goes beyond simply understanding this world and understanding our life or understanding our problems, but goes into the place of understanding you for eternity.
Doug McMasters: And we pray this in Christ's name Amen.