Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Last week I ended our series entitled finding Jesus in the Tanakh.

I know that I really enjoyed going through and finding little glimpses of our New Testament savior all through the pages of the Old Testament.

It really helped me to pull the two together.

In fact, we could continue to do that little exercise forever, and rather than tie it all as part of a big huge series, I want to start a new series today, and I want us to look at a very intense character in Scripture.

This is a fellow who not many people like to read about, because his story makes people uncomfortable.

A few things about his story actually make people uncomfortable.

The first, is the suffering and trial that Job endured make people extremely squeamish.

He suffered some pretty horrible things, the next thing that makes people uncomfortable is the fact that God would permit him to go through those trials and that suffering in the first place is not only disconcerting, but for a lot of us, it doesn’t fit our doctrine nor does it fit most church tradition for what the nature and character of God is, or should be!

We don’t understand it, and so we avoid it.

What I’d like to do today is perhaps give you a little glimpse into the heart and character of God and His ways.

That glimpse may help us to understand how a righteous man like Iyov would ever have to endure this kind of suffering.

So who was this Iyov?

Was He an Allegorical Figure?

Some scholars seem to think he was.

They ask questions such as.

“Where did he come from?

Is Uz even a real place” or if he was an historical figure, why then is he in the Ketuvim instead of in the Torah where the history lives, or in the prophets where the rest of the history books are?” Or perhaps they’ll point to the extreme nature of the story and say, “Come on.

This is so extreme, how could this ever have happened?

Was He an Historical Figure?

Some scholars and many Hebrew sages will claim he was an historical figure.

In fact some of the ancient Hebrew sages claim that the book of Iyov was written by Moses at around the same time he did the Torah.

If this is true, then that means that he would have lived around the same time as Abraham, and actually there are some ancient Hebrew sages that claim that oral tradition tells them that Iyov was Married to Abraham’s daughter Dinah.

God refers to Iyov in the same sentence as Noah and Daniel, and we know those to be historical figures, and James refers to Iyov in the New Testament, so he was obviously well known to them as well.

So much for the idea that he was an allegorical figure, but does that mean that the book is an historical account?

Here’s what Messianic Hebrew Scholar Dr. Golan Broshi believes, and I would tend to agree with him on his assessment.

He says he believes “the book of Iyov is a story based on true events, as retold by Moses”.

I mean, how many people wax as poetic as Moses in the midst of such extreme suffering?

The Structure of the Book

This is a book that is structured rather uniquely, and so it will affect the way we go about studying it.

It starts out in narrative form for about the first two chapters, then it shifts into a poetic form for most of the rest, and then it ends up on the final Chapter as narrative again.

It’s rather built like a sandwich.

A big fat sandwich, but a yummy for your spiritual tummy kind of sandwich.

The book explores a lot of themes, and we could literally stay on this book for the next five or six months before we exhausted the material and we’d have still had questions at the end.

I’m not sure how many parts this series is going to have, but I’m pretty sure we won’t be able to cover the entire book.

I’m going to make every effort to hit the highlights and the passages that the Holy Spirit points out as the most significant.

With that in mind, let’s get into Iyov.

So let’s take a look at what the Bible says about Iyov

He was blameless

תָּם

definition: sound, wholesome, complete, morally innocent, having integrity

That’s a lot to say about a man, how many people in your life have you known that you can say that about?

I for one, do not know of many.

And as a result of being blameless, he was incredibly wealthy.

He had so much livestock and so many servants, look at what it says about him:

He was the wealthiest man in the east!

Then it goes on to give an example of Iyov’s piety.

Now let’s set this against the backdrop of what’s going on a the time.

First, we are about 250 years after the confusing of the languages at the tower of Babel.

And what we’ve found is that humanity hasn’t really learned their lesson.

Even after everything had been destroyed by the flood, you had humanity rebelling against God.

Then there was Terah who with his three sons, one of whom you know as Abram, they were in the business of making idols!

It was against this backdrop that we see a man standing above it all in righteousness.

Iyov, stood with Yehovah.

What did these two have in common?

Well Scripture tells us this:

So that tells us why Iyov was so amazingly wealthy and successful, but that also is what is so dreadfully depressing and difficult about this book of the Bible, and that is that while Iyov was righteous even by the declaration of the Lord Himself, he still endured trials, at the hands of ha satan.

How is this right?

Today I want to try to demystify that part for you, so that perhaps you can be a little easy on God regarding this episode with Iyov.

And by extension, I am hoping that you can be more forgiving on yourself if you aren’t living a charmed and blessed life like Iyov, and I hope by the end of this series we will all learn to make the most of our trials, and become enriched by them because whether we want to admit it or not, suffering is the currency of the economy of God.

So let’s get back to Iyov

Here is the linchpin of the entire book of Iyov.

It happens right at the end of verse 9. “Is it for nothing that Iyov fears God?

The Hebrew here actually says, “Does Iyov fear you for free?”

In other words, of course Iyov fears you, he knows all the benefits he can get from serving You.

The only reason He loves you is because you’re bribing him.

Church, them’s fighting words now!

The devil is picking fight on God and poor old Iyov is about to get caught in the middle of it.

Today I ask you point blank, Do you fear the Lord for free?

Do you fear him because He deserves it, ad not for the stuff you can get from Him?

That seems like a hard question to ask, and it is, but you see, there comes a time in all of our lives where we have to make the decision that Iyov did.

We have to decide if we have no other benefit from serving God, is He still worth giving Him our whole heart, mind, soul and even our life?

Maybe we need to write these words of the devil on our homes as an ironic reminder.

“Do we serve God for nothing?”

You say “Pastor, that’s crazy!

And that is so difficult, who can do it?”

God is always seeking people who will serve Him for nothing.

Consider Abram who was asked by Yehovah to pick up all his belongings and leave his people and leave the land he knew and go into a new land - the land of the Canaanites.

Or when after he had already proved his loyalty to God, and even had his name changed to Abraham and received a son of the promise, he was asked by God yet again for everything - with no promise of anything in return.

God went to him and asked him, “are you willing to serve me for nothing?”

Or look at Joseph, who had everything stripped away even though he was a righteous man.

He was thrown into a jail and forgotten.

Yehovah asked him to continue to serve Him - FOR FREE!

Right there in that jail!

For free.

Are you hearing me church?

Sometimes God wants to know, will you serve Him just because He’s worthy and for no other reason?

How about Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego?

Did they not serve God for free?

Did they not give it all?

They even said,

They all served God for nothing, and now the question is before the courts of heaven.

Let’s pick up the story there.

Job 1:9–22 (NJV)

Then the satan answered יְהוָ֜ה and said, “Does Iyov fear God for nothing?

Have you not made a hedge around him, and around his house and around all that he has, on every side?

You have blessed the work of his hands and his substance is increased in the land.

But stretch out your hand now , and touch all that he has, and he will renounce you to your face.

יְהוָ֜ה said to the satan, “Behold all that he has is in your power; only on himself do not stretch out your hand.”

So the satan went our from the presence of יְהוָ֜ה

It fell on a day when his sons and his daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, that there came a messenger to Iyov, and said” The oxen were plowing, and the donkeys feeding beside them, and the Sabeans attacked , and took them away.