Bible Study: The Book of Job - Setting the Scene
2021-02-24
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IRpNS-lcao

Amen. Amen. Amen.

I don't know if our live stream people will like Ezra on the drums. I mean, I'm okay with it. It adds a little bit of excitement. So if you have, there's handouts on the table. If you are joining us online, just a note, you can go to the front page of our website, and there are handouts available there as well. I'm just adjusting some volumes on the live stream. All right, we're going to take a look at the Book of Job tonight. One of the things I'd like us to do, and it may be a little bit of adjustment, is maybe spend a little bit more time in discussion. And so I'm somebody who really likes a lot of facts, as I got like 15 pages of notes here. So if I get going and you want to say something, just go ahead and stop me if you have a question.

If you have a question online, we'll try to keep an eye on that as well. So I want to deal a little bit with some introductory matters for the book of Job as we begin. One is, first of all, the biblical testimony of Job. So one of the clearest direct quotations from Job in the New Testament comes from Paul in 1 Corinthians 3, and he'll say this: "For the wisdom of the world is folly with God, for it is written: He catches the wise in their craftiness." And what Paul is doing there is he's quoting word for word from Job, the fifth chapter. And I don't want to look at what he quotes so much as how he quotes it. And what Paul will say is this: "For it is written." That's Paul's formula for quoting Scripture.

Paul looks at the book of Job, and he says, "This belongs in the Bible." And if you remember what Paul thinks about Scripture in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, he'll say, "It's breathed out by God, and it's profitable for teaching reproof and correction, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work." So in Paul's mind, the book of Job isn't just an interesting story. It's not just a bit of trivia. It's not even important history. It is the word of God given to us to teach us, to reprove us, and to help us. The second very clear picture of Job is in James, the fifth chapter, where he says, "Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful."

And so according to James, Job encouraged us to be steadfast and to see the purpose of the Lord. And not just the purpose of the Lord, but his compassion and his mercy. And if you've read through Job, you might say, "Well, how do we see the compassion of the Lord in the midst of all of these things?" But what James, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says is, "This is what I have learned from the book of Job." So the first thing I want us to do, as sort of our introductory matters, is to be reminded that this is a book of Scripture. Secondly, Job directs us to Jesus. So my theological position on the Old Testament is that every part of the Old Testament points to Jesus. In Luke 24, twice in that chapter, Jesus will sit down with his followers, too, on the road to Emmaus.

They're actually walking. And then with the eleven, and he will say to them, you know, starting with the Scriptures, he'll walk through the Old Testament and say, "It all points to me." And so the question is, how does Job point to Jesus? Tim Keller, if you're not familiar with him, he's a pretty amazing preacher. He has a sermon on the first two chapters of 1 Peter, where he talks about how the Old Testament points to Jesus. He talks about how Jesus is the true and better Adam, the true and better Abel. And he gets to Job, and he will say, "Jesus is the true and better Job, the truly innocent sufferer who ultimately intercedes for and saves his stupid friends." Because it's really what Jesus does for us, right? He intercedes for us and saves those of us who have gone astray.

The other thing that struck me was in Job chapter 9. At the very end of the chapter, Job wants to confront God, right? He's experienced all of this struggle. His friends really at that point are not helping. And so Job says, "I want to see face-to-face with God, and I want to do it in a court of law, but he is so much greater than me." And what it'll say is that he longs for a mediator who will take the rod of God. And one of the remarkable things is the thing that Job longs for as New Testament Christians, we have, right? We have the mediator, Jesus. And so we'll see throughout the book of Job that it points to Jesus in different ways. I just wanted to get us thinking a little bit about that.

Third, and probably most of us know this, Job is difficult. 42 chapters, big theological concepts, big theological ideas, big struggles. And I think that's probably for us a good thing, because what it does is it drives the word more deeply into our hearts. So Martin Luther, as he was struggling with Romans, the first chapter, he will say, "I beat on Luther, because I wanted to know what he meant." And so Martin Luther literally has this picture of him just beating on the book of Romans. And what that does is it drives it down into his heart, because he had to struggle for it. He had to work for it. And so when he became to understand it, it meant that much more, and I think that's how Job helps us. And so one of the things that I think the church has struggled with in the past is we have treated Job,

and I read one commentator who said we treat Job sort of like the Sunday school lesson. Bad stuff happens. He talks a lot. Good stuff happens. That's the end of Job. You know, very, very quickly. In our introductory video I put online, I did a little bit of this. So maybe you've heard of the Puritan John Owen, the guy who preached before John Owen at his church. His name was Joseph Carroll. He preached 424 sermons from the book of Job. Now, he did spread it out over 23 years, which to me is remarkable. You show up one Sunday, they were starting the book of Job. 23 years later you come back, and he's still preaching from the book of Job. And his last sermon, he will say, "I have not affected a clear understanding of some of the passages in Job."

So 23 years, you know, 400 plus sermons, and he says, "There's still parts that I struggle with." George Hutchison, who's a Scottish Presbyterian, 316 sermons. Calvin, in the 1500s, will preach weekday sermons, so you'll go to church on your lunch break. And so for like 14 months, he'll preach 159 sermons at lunchtime on the book of Job. Spurgeon preaches 89 sermons. I went through and counted them. But the remarkable thing about Spurgeon, if you've read much of Spurgeon, he doesn't take big chunks of Scripture. He takes like three words and writes a sermon, or one verse and writes a sermon. And so he does 89 sermons on the book of Job, and you can tell Spurgeon barely scratches the surface because he only takes a little tiny chunk at a time. And so we want to try to balance the length and the complexity with also not being here for 24 years.

So we're going to try to move quickly. One of the things I think is important about the book of Job is that we understand that it is relevant to our lives. And in some cases that is the fact that the book of Job confronts what's known as the prosperity gospel. You know, if you do good, God is going to bless you. And if you do bad and if you're suffering, you obviously don't have faith. We know that's not true with Job, but there are people who preach that you have to sort of earn God's favor and God's, you know, the disasters in your life are due to you lacking faith. That's not the picture we get in the book of Job. We see spiritual warfare, we see practical how to deal with struggle, and we see things like how to grieve, and we also are confronted with the sovereignty of God.

So, before we dive into it, I know that's a little more sermon-y than I wanted to start, but any thoughts or comments before we dive into Job? When you touched on it when you said it was the sovereignty of God, I think the whole book is the excitement of Jesus. Yes. Yeah. The prevailing philosophy of God. Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's so relevant because it shifts us away from this man-centered view, which is Job's friends. That's what they really present is that, you know, the first three present that man-centered view. Yes, ma'am. So, what you're talking about is that God has to have to have one child, which is, "I'm sorry, you're done." Right. And so, some of the people, Job's friends will kind of say that. They'll say, "Well, the reason that you're going through all of these bad things is because you didn't do something right."

And so, they don't see, you know, the real reason behind suffering. Any other thoughts or comments before we dive into it? Go ahead. It's a specific type of Scripture. It's wisdom. It's not just history. It is history. It's teaching you about wisdom and how to be lost, as well as the story. Yeah, and the main story is really only the first two chapters and the last seven verses, and the rest of it's monologues back and forth, which Brent's been doing Shakespearean monologues on Instagram. You've got to check on your actor friends because they're not okay. But there's that monologue, and some of those you struggle to understand monologues, and we hear these monologues, and they can be for us a bit of a struggle because it's not part of a thing that we are familiar with.

Any other thoughts or comments? All right, let's dive into a portrait of Job, and so I'm just going to read it, and then we'll kind of walk through it just a little bit. And this will be the first five verses. "There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. And that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters, and he possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants. So this man was the greatest of all the people of the East. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house, each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them.

And when the day of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, "It may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." Thus Job did continually. So this is our primary biographical sketch of Job. Not to say that we don't learn more about him in the rest of the book, but these five verses give us a glimpse of his life. And so, before we dive into that, I just want to talk a little bit about the land of Uz. We're not completely sure where it is. We have sort of three big clues. There's a website down there on the bottom that kind of walks through some of those, gives a little bit of a map, but I'll sort of point out the three clues.

One is that Uz is referenced in Scripture a couple of times, likely south and east of where Israel was located. The second clue has to do with the people who attack him. Remember, we're not like today where you can fly a helicopter or like a C-130 in with all our troops and attack somebody. It had to be easier journeying distance, so he had to be somewhere in all of, you know, in close proximity to those places. And then Job's three friends, and I learned something that I had never heard about the book of Job here. Bildad the Shuhite, so you learn all their locations. This guy is named Shuhite. Now, what's interesting about this is Abraham, later in years, he will take a wife whose name is Keturah. She bore him Zimrin, Joskin, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shua.

And so a Shuhite is a descendant of Abraham's son, Shua. So you're a Shuhite, you're a descendant of that, which is interesting to me. The theory is that this guy is a descendant of Abraham that's coming. Whether grandson, great-grandson, which places Job around the time of the patriarchs, the first book written in the Bible before Genesis, Exodus, and Leviticus, but in the timeline of Scripture, somewhere after Genesis, the 11th chapter. And so that was just my interesting Job fun fact that I had never realized. It's sort of interesting to see how that ties together. A guy Abraham and his family and one of his descendants is a friend of Job. So what do you guys think about Job's character? We see it described in verse 1, verse 8, and chapter 2, verse 3. And why do you think this is -- why do you think it's important that it starts like this?

And secondly, why do you think it's repeated over and over again? Well, I think that in order to deal with and handle properly the great diversity, why do you think it's important in the heart of God? And we'll see that illustrated, you know, especially in how he deals with struggle and suffering, yeah. Yes, ma'am. I think there's a comparison to Noah here as well, because Noah is also the tribe. Yes. There's a commonality there, and then also, because it's set outside of Israel, and there's a question on how the rest, you know, how the rest of the women do that they're not in their lives in Abraham's family. I think that points out this is a universal bit of wisdom. So, it's not just for Hebrews, it's for everybody. And I think that's part of the reason it's so vague in terms of when and where and all of these things, is so that it doesn't matter where you are and who you are reading this, you have a picture of, yeah, absolutely.

I think one of the reasons that I was thinking about is why this is sort of repeated and put over and over again, is so that when the suffering comes, we all know it's coming, Job doesn't, but it's enforced in our mind this is not God's punishment on him. This is not God saying, "Man, you really messed up, Job." This is reinforcing. In fact, God will actually extend his description of Job in verse 3 of chapter 2 when he talks to Satan. We'll get there in a minute. Any other thoughts or comments? All right, I want to just unpack for you a little bit of Job's wealth and his family. So I was thinking about this. It seems like there's probably two ways for us to measure wealth. One is sort of objective, meaning this is our assets. Here's what our bank account balance is. Here's how much stuff we have.

Here's what my house is worth, my cars are worth, and we come up with a number and say that's where I'm at. So Job, objectively, is wealthy. So you've got these thousands of cows, or thousands of oxen, you know, hundreds of donkeys. You've got sheep. You've got all of these servants. So one of the things I want to do, I'm somebody who likes numbers, so I would like to know how much this is worth, modern-day terms. But that's not an easy thing to do because, like, how much is an oxen worth? Like, you know, and is our market the same as their market? Some people have tried to figure it out, and they come out in the millions, but what really stood out to me that I'd never thought about before is Job's got to have a lot of land.

By modern standards, he needs at least, like, 10,000 acres. And remember, you know, it's probably not as dry there as it is today, but he probably needs more than that. I mean, this is a guy who is, you know, essentially like a little king in this area. The other thing you have is comparative wealth, and we've probably experienced these kind of situations that, compared to some people in this world, we are considered very wealthy. I remember going to the Philippines when I was in high school, and somebody said, "Oh, you have a job?" I said, "Yes." I said, "What do you make?" I said, "Well, I don't make very much, like $6 an hour." But that was the definition of wealth to somebody who didn't make that much. And so Job is not just objectively wealthy.

He is comparatively wealthy. It says he is the greatest of all the people in the East. And then he has a great family, ten children, seven sons, three daughters, a wife, and we're going to call her Mrs. Job, because we don't really have a name for her. What's interesting is that these sons used to go hold a feast, each in their house, each on his day. Some commentators think this is a biblical birthday party, on your day. They're like, "Hey, everybody, come over and celebrate my birthday." Now they may have just been having a feast, to have a feast, because Dad's rich. Let's all get together and kill the fatty calf and enjoy a meal together. But look at Job's response to this. It's not so much about what the kids are doing, but about what Job would do. So as soon as they're done with the feast,

Job gets up early in the morning. He would offer burnt offerings in proportion to the number of children. So he does 10. And he does it not because of actual sin, but because of hypothetical sin. It may be that my children have sinned and cursed God in his heart. So Job cares spiritually about his children. He also has a good dad who loves them and wants to see them walking in the right way. Any thoughts about Job the dad? Yes, ma'am. He hasn't done anything wrong. You'll see as we go on. Alright, so here's the place where the scene shifts. And one of the things that I would just point out if you're studying the Bible on your own, one of the interesting things to look for is repeated things. So we see like the repeated righteousness of Job. One of the ways these two chapters are divided up are by this phrase, "There was a day."

And so we kind of get this weird "devil went down to Georgia" situation. There was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord. Now, in the Old Testament, that was the picture of how God operated. He was the ruler, sovereign over all, and He sends out His host. You'll find that throughout the Bible, the Lord of hosts, to administer His will. And so they're sort of coming into the office is the picture here. And the Lord said to Satan, "From where have you come?" Satan answered the Lord from going to and fro on the earth and walking up and down on it. And the Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is none like him on earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil."

Then Satan answered the Lord and said, "Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the length. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face." And the Lord said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hands." So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord. So the big thing to think about, and this is something that I think maybe I knew intellectually, but I had not grasped emotionally, is that Job is completely unaware of all this. Now we know that intellectually, but from our mind we see behind the scenes.

Remember, Job doesn't see behind the scenes. He has no idea what's about to come. We know what's about to come. We know how it plays out, but Job doesn't. And we don't know that Job ever fully sees behind the scenes of what is happening. And so, God sort of marshals his troops. The accuser arrives, literally in Hebrew it's called "The Satan." This is, you know, when we talk about "Satan," capital "S," the picture here is "The Satan." It literally means "The Accuser," or "The Prosecuting Attorney," which is why one of the reasons that we have a courtroom scene here. And what he's going to do is he's going to accuse. Now, it may be "Actual Satan." That name comes into the New Testament to be a reference to the devil himself. And so, it's quite likely this is actually "The Satan," the Satan that we think of.

And he comes with this accusation: "God, Job doesn't really love you. He only loves the stuff that you give." So, what do you think about Satan's accusation? Yes, ma'am. All right. What I think, you know, Satan, he really focuses on accusing the blame within the other. Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's his, that's like literally his, yeah, yeah. And it's not a thing that just happened then, too, because that's what it says in Revelation. The accuser of our brothers has been thrown down. You know, the Satan of our brothers, the one who's accusing and putting them on trial. I wrote Satan as a liberal. He wanders around causing trouble, falsifies his brothers, and is happy all the things as he wants them, not as they ought to be. Okay, there you go. I mean, I like to do that.

If that's not the platform of the Bible, what is it? Well, I mean, it's a platform of accusation, right? It's constant. You can't do this. You can't have this. And that's what he does. Any other thoughts? So one of the things that I want to talk about is the situation. Why do you think God does what he does? I think it's John Piper who, when he was going through this, says, "Imagine this scenario." To understand what's happening here, imagine the scenario that you're the owner of a jewelry store, and you have like a million-dollar diamond in your display case, and you're in the back doing paperwork, and some guy breaks in through your back window, and there's a thief in his mask and his burglary tool standing there, and he goes, "Oh, I didn't know anybody was here."

And the owner of the jewelry store looks at him and goes, "Well, have you considered my giant two-million-dollar diamond sitting out in the front?" Like, why does God take Job and go, "Hey, you've been out roaming the earth? Have you considered Job?" Take a look at Job. Why don't we examine Job a little more carefully? Why do you think God does that? I think, in part, because God wants to be in the Bible to make your faith, and then also to show the leaders the faith that what it could take, and what it will take, to be in the system. Yeah, and I think the point of this isn't so much, we often think this is for Job. I think this is more for, you know, this whole situation is for God's people. So that, yeah, well, you could say we can understand and see what it looks like.

I also thought that he knew Job wouldn't let him down. Yeah, well, God knows the heart. Yeah. And so, yeah. I mean, I've never really read much of Job, and I've never read much of any of it. And I, you know, went a little forward, and I'm like, you know something, that's a pretty strong fact. You know, everything is coming up next, and he knew that, you know, he's gonna have a strong heart when you're laying down. Yeah. That's pretty impressive, the way Job, how it was tempered, I guess? I don't know how it was described, but, yeah, that impressed me. You know, I thought, too, though, that although Job was described as lightness and upright and being the right thing, by the end of the book, he realized that Job had some room to grow, too.

Yeah. So, these tests, you know, I think were God's way of getting those at that level. Or, I guess what we see is like the refiner's fire, where you're purified through affliction and come out more pure on the other side. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think those are all, and, you know, it's... One of the things that, I think, as Eric was talking about how God knows the heart, one of the things that I thought of is that... One of the things this really illustrates is the difference in power between Satan and God, right? Because God knows Job, right? He knows his heart. And Satan, on the other hand, he only has his accusations, right? And additionally, what we find is that he's limited. God says, "Yeah, you can take all his stuff. Don't touch him."

I mean, yeah, but that's foreshadowing. Any other thoughts? I think in verse 10, God says, "Have you not put a hedge around him?" And how does Satan know that there's a hedge? Yeah, well, he's been walking to and fro on the earth like a roaring lion. So it's Mr. Casualt coming in, "No, I've been here and there." And God's like, "Really? You've been here and there?" And he's like, "Well, you know, I've been sipping around this hedge, guys." So you think it's God's way of calling out Satan in his deceitfulness. Yeah. All right, let's take a look at how catastrophe strikes. There was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking, drinking wine in the oldest brother's house. There came a messenger to Job and says, "The oxen were plowing, the donkeys were feeding beside them. Some Sabeans fell upon them,

took them, and struck them down. And took the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you. And while he was speaking, there came another who said, "The fire of God fell from heaven, burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them. And I alone have escaped to tell you. And while he was yet speaking, there came another. The Chaldeans formed three groups, made a raid on the camels, and took them, and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword. I alone have escaped to tell you. And while he was speaking, there came another who said, "Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother's house. And behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house,

and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead. I alone have escaped to tell you." Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell on the ground, and worshiped. And he said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb. Naked I shall return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." So, wave after wave of disaster, all of his possessions and servants ultimately culminating in his seven sons and three daughters. And I was thinking about how we react to suffering. So, for me, I tend to get really grumpy, really snappy. When things start going badly, I get real, real short with people. You probably never would believe that. Right, Brent? But, that's my tendency. And all of us have our tendency. Some people tend to discouragement, right?

Some people go to complaining. Some people run in fear. And what do we think of Job's reaction? It reminds me, years ago, in D.C., there was a murder. Pretty horrific murder. There was a family of 46. Wiped out guys, for whatever reason. And the news was going about us pretty many times. And they were interviewing, I think it was his uncle. And this guy was just like, "It's God's will. It's just what's happening. You know what we can do? Just move forward." And that happened in the late 80s, and that's still sticking to me. That that guy was just straight and solid. And when I read in Job that, it's the first thing that popped into my mind was that guy. And I thought, "God, I hope it never happens." But I hope that I have that fortitude that if it ever happens, that that's where my mind is going after my heart is.

I don't see it happening, but... Yeah. But it's like, you know, and the testimony in that is far greater than the person who has everything perfect their entire life. It glorifies God more greatly in that suffering. Sort of along those same lines, I was thinking about, like, Horatio Spafford, the song, "It Is Well With My Soul." And if you know much about Horatio Spafford, he, like, loses everything in the Chicago Fire, families go into Europe, he gets stuck on business, sends his wife and kids ahead. You know, they have a shipwreck. His wife sends him a telegram that just says, "Saved alone." So on the way, you know, across the ocean to meet up with his wife, he asked the captain of the ship he was on, "Tell me when we get to that area."

And the captain, you know, there's some accounts that the captain thinks that he is going to go and join his children, right? You know, he's going to look for the place where they went, and he's going to jump off the side of the boat, and instead he writes, you know, "It is well with my soul." You know, "When sorrow is like sea billows roll, you know, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, you know, it is well, it is well with my soul." And I mean, it's what Job does, it's what, you know, this guy does, and I mean, that leaves a lasting impression on us, especially in the midst of sorrow and loss. I mean, I think that's kind of the same mindset. It's easy to play by, it's easy to stick together, it's easy to support each other when you're up by three touchdowns.

But when you're down by three touchdowns, you only have a quarter left, and things don't look good, can you have that same level of the team here? Can you have the same level of the team, you can teach period, and everything you're going to win, and I think that's the magnificent thing. You know, this is a revelation of his character. Yeah, absolutely. All right, one of the things that I wanted to think about is what Job does when he rose, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell on the ground, and worshiped. So when we feel deep emotion, what do we try to do? It's like, well, I'm going to let him see you cry, right? Stiff upper lip. And so one of the things Job's doing is, culturally, this is making the outside match the inside, right? He's letting everybody know the depths of his feeling by matching the outside.

So one of the things I think we learn is how to grieve. And we'll see this a little bit more throughout the book. And one of the things I thought about it, Rachel's grandmother's funeral, we were sitting like in the second row at kind of the visitation. And this guy came up, and he has kind of history. He's an older gentleman, has a history of not being very tactful. And so here's all of the, Rachel and her cousins just, they're all crying, right? And he comes and goes, "Why are you crying? What do you have to cry about?" And it's like, well, it's the appropriate response to what has happened. Anyway, he goes, "Well, my son died. I didn't cry at his funeral, or my daughter died." I don't remember when one of his kids died. "I didn't even cry at their funeral."

And I was like, "Well, I don't think that says more about you than about this." And then he made the mistake of asking him, "Are you guys going to cry at my funeral?" And they all just looked at me and went, "No." So, but there is some, you know, there is a tendency on our parts to try to say, "Well, Christians can't be sad, right? Christians can't grieve. Christians can't show, it's okay, right? It's okay to be overwhelmed with emotion, to fall on the ground." Now, he falls on the ground in worship, but it's also worship in the midst of grief. And so I think we learned a little bit about how to properly grieve. All right, let's move kind of quickly through here. So, Job, we come back to the scene in heaven again.

The same scene sort of repeats itself. God will say in verse 2, we'll pick it up there, "From where have you come?" Satan answered, "From going to and fro on the earth, walking up and down on it, the Lord said to Satan, 'Have you considered my servant Job? There is none like him on the earth, a blameless, upright man, fears God, turns away from evil.'" Then God expands on this refrain that we've heard in the first two chapters. "He holds fast to his integrity, though you incited me against him to destroy him without reason." Then Satan answered the Lord, "Skin for skin, all that a man has he will give for his life, but stretch out your hand, touch his bone and his flesh, he will curse you to his face." And the Lord said to Satan, "Behold, he is in your hand, only spare his life."

God says, "Look, I told you Job is true." Satan says, "Well, there's still some stuff we can take away from him." And so we learn a little bit about Satan's limitations. Any thoughts about this section here? All right, I want to try to dive into what happens to Job next, and then I want us to talk just for a minute about the two responses. So, "Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head, and he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself, and he sat in the ashes." So now we need to understand a little bit of the severity of this, right? This is not just, "Oh, like I bumped my arm, and I cut my finger," right?

It says, "From the bottom of his feet." So think about it. He's walking. And these painful sores, if he walks, he's walking on the sores, and they're covering him from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head. And to give you a little more picture of these sores, in Job 7, he will say this, "When I lie down, I say, when shall I arise? The night is long, and I am full of tossing till the dawn." So he's not sleeping at night. Here's what he says in verse 5, "My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt, and my skin hardens and then breaks out afresh." So do you get the picture? It's not just that he has sores, and he's trying to scratch himself because they're itchy, so he's got this piece of pottery, and he's scratching himself, but these sores eventually are full of worms.

So he's like, I mean, this is not a good situation. So bad that his friends, when they come in verse 12, do not recognize him. Any thoughts about Job's sickness? All right, here's where I wanted to get us to tonight is the two responses. And so we're going to talk about Mrs. Job first, and then we'll talk about his friends. His wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die." But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God and not receive evil? In all this, Job did not sin with his lips." So let's talk about Mrs. Job. So she's got a bad reputation historically in the church, right? Because she says, "Oh, curse God and die." So Augustine would call her Diabla Justrix.

Like, you don't need to know Latin to know where we're going with this. Satan's ally. John Calvin will call her Originum Satanae, which, I mean, you're kind of getting the picture there as well. You know, the tool of Satan. And so she has gotten a pretty bad rap, and I think there's a little bit understandable that. Here's Job in the deepest low of his life, and she goes, "Curse God and die." We need to understand, too, I think, and this is where we probably have been less than charitable to Job's wife. Everything that's happened to Job, with the exception of sickness, has happened to her, right? She has lost all their wealth, all their security. She has lost all of their children. Additionally, she looks at Job, and he looks like he's going to die.

And in this time period, what happens to a widow if her husband dies? Yeah, I mean, she's looking at the end of everything. And so it's, I think, a little understandable that she is struggling with this. And some people say, "Well, why would she say this?" And it was interesting. Somebody said this, is that she's basically saying, "Give up," right? Why would you keep suffering? Look, you can't walk, you can't, there's worms, like, why wouldn't you just die? That she's not necessarily indicting God, although she may be. We don't know. But she's also maybe just saying, "Job, just put yourself out of your misery by cursing God." Now, I don't know if that's a good response or not, but I want you to see how Job responds to her. He says, "You speak as one of the foolish women."

Now, so notice he doesn't say that she's a foolish woman. She says, "You're talking like this." There's some commentators will say that what Job is saying to her is that you're not acting like yourself. Like, you're talking like one of those foolish people. That he is, in the midst of her grief, she has lost a grip. I don't know. There's a lot of options with Job's wife. What do we think about her and her response to this situation? Well, I think it seems to be a story that she is a representative of the expected response. Yeah. And then we've got Job, who is a standard guy, who says, you know, he's a standard. And then his wife is what a normal response would be to him. Yeah. And oftentimes it may mirror our response. Like, why would I even bother trying?

I might as well just die. Yeah. Yeah. No, and I hadn't thought of that. It's an excellent point that she's kind of the foil, you know, to... Yeah. Something special. She's us. Yeah. Any other thoughts about Job's wife? All right, let's take a look at Job's three friends. Now when Job's three friends heard of this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz, the Temanite, Bildad, the Shuite, Zophar, the Namathite. They made an appointment together to come and show sympathy and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept. And they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven, and they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights. No one spoke a word to him, for they saw his suffering was very great."

So let's talk about his friends, right? What can we learn about sitting with someone in suffering from Job's friends? Eventually. Yeah, I think what they did during the first season of life, they stayed in the present, they were... Quiet. They were showing their empathy for him. They were presumably there. If he said, "I needed something, they would go get it." But he didn't speak, so they didn't speak. So they were kind of mirroring him to sleep, but their physical presence was very simple. Yeah. And then they opened their mouths and everything. Yeah. They made a picture of what is, you know, positive comfort for someone who's in a bad situation like that, versus what they do next, which is what we tend to do, you know. Yeah. What was it? I don't remember if it was Calvin Coolidge who said it's, you know, people think if you don't talk, you're a fool, but you could open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Yeah. And so, one of the things that I never thought about is that they plan on this, right? This isn't like, "Oh, we stopped by, see Job." Everything's swollen apart, right? It says that they planned this. They heard about all this evil, so we don't know how much time is coming. So they get together, and they come together, and then they sit with him in the ashes, which I think is a good picture of how, you know, when we talk about bearing one another's burdens, and, you know, that's for the law of Christ, that's a little bit of just sitting, right? Not always, you know, sometimes what we do, we tend to do, is we'll maybe, you know, cliches, or try to, you know, try to say something, and I remember when my grandma passed away, I went back to school, you know, and one of the kids came up and said, "Oh, she's in a better place now," and I was like, "Well, I don't care if she's in a better place. I want my grandma here," right? You know,

I was like sixth grade. You know, it's those kind of things that they avoid. They do very well avoiding at first, and then foreshadowing. So, any other thoughts about Job's friends? So, one of the things I just have us think about is one of the undercurrents we see throughout this is that this is not just a physical battle with Job's physical stuff. And Job's physical health, Job's family, this is a spiritual battle, which is one of the reasons I think it's so relevant to Christians today, because this is not just how I deal with physical stuff. This is a real spiritual battle. These physical attacks have a spiritual dimension. And I think, you know, when Paul talks about, you know, our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against rulers and principalities, all of these things.

One of the things Job reminds us of is that that's true. Any thoughts or comments about Job and where we've been? All right, we covered a lot of ground tonight, and I'm not really sure how to divide up the next section. I've got like four different ways started. So let's just start reading, and we'll tell you when to stop. No, we'll try to read through probably the next three or four chapters. I'll have a better outline tomorrow, and we'll send it out in the email Thursday night or Friday night with where we're going next and with a few study questions. And so, I'm thankful for everybody's discussion. It was encouraging to me. I'm thankful for that. I'm going to go ahead and have a word of prayer, and we'll be dismissed. Father in heaven, thank you for your word. Thank you for your

your servant Job. Help us not just to be thankful for your good gifts, but be thankful for you, that when we have nothing left but you, that we would cling to you deeply like Job, that we would be able to bless your name through our tears.