Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro & Review

Last week we begun the wind down of Job and His three friends as Eliphaz Spoke Calling Job to Repent, Turn from the path of the wicked and receive spiritual prosperity.

He charged Job with a list of very general sins.

He called Job to Repent for not doing the things a wealthy man was suppose to do.

He has no basis for His claim and as we have seen God is the one who called Job blameless.

No one says he was born without, sin but here in life God gives him some pretty lofty words:

Blameless

Upright

Fears God

Turns from evile

None like him in the world

This is the man we examine once again today as we see how he responds to another charge against him and another call to Repent.

And Today what we will see is that In the midst of all the Chaos swirling around him and the continued Harassment of His friends

Job’s Goal is to Stand fast While:

I. Seeking God Alone

II.

Knowing God Alone

III.

Trusting In God Alone

TR: First let us examine hoe he endeavors in His search for God.....

I. Seeking God Alone (23:1-9)

Job has listened again to their ramblings and is more dreary for it.

He is about to disappoint them in his next words for his thoughts have not changed.

They have lead him to a no new understanding.

-He Longs no longer to speak to these friends they have ceased to offer answers or even lead him back to God in a meaningful way.

-Only God can be hope for Job

Job has an understanding of His character and a thought about Gods

-He knows God is sovereign

-He also here knows that God is loving towards his own (the fact that he now believes God would hear his case)

-There is a longing to be before God, To see God, Job is not like Adam and Eve who in their sin ride and hide from the face of God.

Job in his innocence longs to see the face of His God

-In the season of blessing he was a man of God and in the turmoils of suffering he still clings to His God and longs for Him.

(some may find his words unsettling but his intention is not to get even with God but to gain understanding from the only one who can offer it)

-While Job might think more highly of his ability to understand (as God will show him when he does speak) He does lay before us that he does not view God as vindictive, but as caring.

-For Him God will not destroy but will hear his Childs painful words (Here he is looking for peace in calamity and God is the only hope for that peace not his circumstances or lofty arguments.

God is his Hope and peace)

-So Job Seeks everywhere to Find God, knowing that God is far beyond our reach and it is not for man to come to God.

Here again he is stating the fact that God is far beyond me, but that he is not devoid of care or ambivalent to his distress (for this is what Eliphaz claimed to be Jobs view)

Spurgeon: There are cases in which one who is a true child of God cannot for a while find his Father.

Do not condemn yourself because you are in the dark; on the contrary, recollect then that there are many who fear the Lord, yet who walk in darkness, and have no light.

Let all such trust in the name of the Lord, and stay themselves upon their God, and in due season the light will come to them.

If this is the case with you, be thankful that you want to see your God.

Let your very desires after him, your anxiety because you miss him, and the sorrow of your spirit when you are, apparently, deserted by him, encourage you to believe that you are one of his children.

Another woman’s child will not cry after you, dear mother; it is your own child that cries after you, and if you were not a child of God, you would not long and cry for the joy of his presence.

If you were not his child, that presence would be no delight to you, it would be your dread.

TR: Job longs for His God because He belongs to God and so He knows that to stand means he must seek and to seek he must Know God Alone

II.

Knowing God Alone

-In the midst of chaos and searching Job states quite clearly the reality that this is all the work of God and that while his friends can never perceive the reality of His heart and soul.

God knows.

-This throughout scriptures is the saves to the wounded soul: God truly and personally knows us.

He is not far removed from his children he is with them and lovingly knows them

-Job’s only comfort can come form the reality that there must be more at play that what he can imagine.

(this must be a test and if that be so by God’s mercy he will be purified an come out as Gold)

-Job Knows God and loves God he would choose no other course but the Lords He rebukes Eliphaz’s assumption that he has turned away from God or stopped listening to His words.

Rather Job claims he clings to them all the more because he doesn’t understand.

-Job recognizes the reality of God before him.

The one he seeks will accomplish His goals, not Jobs

Isai 55:9

-God’s power and majesty are overwhelming when we truly think about them, but what Job seems to be getting at as he concludes is that the darkness of fear will not deter him from seeking after God.

-We long for the presence of the Lord at at the same time know what it will mean.

-We know that for Isaiah he was overcome by the glory, Peter saws the fullness of his sins in the boat, John in revelation upon seeing him fell as dead.

God is overwhelming in his awesomeness and yet Christ calls us to come to him as little children.

We come to our father and at the same time King.

-The awesome power of God for Job is a great and tremendous thing, a thing not to hide from but to pursue, and in time he will experience all that these words have longed for (the text of Job concludes with God finding him, granting him an audience, Job being overwhelmed by God’s awesomeness, and the mercy of God being upon Job making him an intercessor for his wayward friends.

Job didn’t know what he was getting into, but his character does come out as Gold in the end by God’s hand)

TR: and So in the midst of Seeking God and Knowing him alone he turns now to His friends understanding of Justice and will challenge them with the harsh reality of the World.

III.

Trusting God Alone

-History of the Interpretive Problems

-Now while it is a difficult to interpret due to its complex Hebrew & structure.

Based on the text that has Gone before I think we can be safe to say to say that here Job continues his argument against the friends.

Here we do not find an indictment per say to God but rather a continued challenge against the friend notion of Retributive Justice which began in chapter 20.

-It is By God’s hands that men rise and fall (Eccl.)

-The wicked do prosper on the earth

-The wicked will also perish on the earth

-Both realities are true

Here we seem to see a biblical change from a theme of suffering to the pondering we find throughout the book of Ecclesiastes.

-He points out that Only God is Sovereign & man cannot understand His ways (Eccl.

8:14)

-It is By God’s hands that men rise and fall (Eccl.

9)

-The wicked do prosper on the earth

-The wicked will also perish on the earth

-Both realities are true

A. The Wicked May Prosper in This Life (24:1-12)

-In the opening sections once again as we see he turns on their assumption that wickedness leads to immediate destruction (the reason they believe he has lost everything)

-In the opening sections once again as we see he turns on their assumption that wickedness leads to immediate destruction (the reason they believe he has lost everything)

-Since Eliphaz challenges Job not to pursue the way of the wicked Job now again reminds them, he never went this way to begin with, by pointing out that the achieve their prosperity through their wickedness and it does not always come to ruin.

-This seems to be setting the point (since he just said he will continue to cling to his integrity) that earthly prosperity and earthly condemnation is something we cannot understand how God works.

-In a Fallen world should judgment come upon wickedness as it transpires their would be no world, their would be no humanity, So while Job knows his innocence he points to the fact that if we set a time for judgment who is God to keep our times.

-The opening lines asks who sets the time and to what day do they look for (this is a charge against Eliphaz’s closing remarks to Job top flee the wicked (21:16-20))

Job’s thoughts on their propserity ends with a rather striking term :”God charges no one with wrongdoing”

-This phrase again captures Job’s argument that judgment and justice does not come on our own time tables and to claim otherwise would be foolish.

The idea of Karma is ridiculous in the eyes of Job.

If God is judge as Job has already claimed and will cling too then he operates in ways that we cannot fathom or comprehend.

APP: -Of Course with the fullness of scripture before us we understand the Long suffering nature of God who brings mercy and grace.

Who is patient and offers salvation.

But Job dives deeper into the thought of the wicked by pointing out that though they appear to prosper they are truly in darkness