Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Prayer
Someone once said..
The story of Job is one of the best known in the entire Bible yet, strangely enough, one of the least understood.
No book in the Scripture is so shrouded in mystery as this ancient story.
Another older writer said…
Thomas Carlyle, a Victorian essayist wrote about the book of Job...
“The grandest book ever written with pen.”
This is from someone who isn’t even a believer.
The book of Job is generally one that is on the surface well known, but is very confusing and perplexing to most people.
I would argue this is because it leaves everyone with many questions and in itself gives few answers.
This book is troubling to our modern minds because it forces us to ask hard questions without clear cut answers.
Job shows us how to faithfully suffer.
Points us to the One who faithfully suffered.
Before we look at the book of Job, I believe there are several important key aspects we need to keep in mind.
House Keeping Items
Language
“An Eastern Book”
That means that it is oriental in nature which means that many of the thoughts and expressions will be unfamiliar to us.
Just like we have phrases like “It’s raining cats and dogs...”
Many cultures and peoples have similar phrases in their own languages.
Style
“A Poetic Book”
Except for the first few chapters and the end of the book, 95% of this book is poetry.
This means that we will need to take a step back and deeply digest what is being said.
Poems “are always a personal ‘take’ on something, communicating not just from head to head but from heart to heart”
Topic
“Deals with Weighty Issues”
Job is categorized as wisdom literature.
There are three books in the Bible that we classify as wisdom literature.
Proverbs is wisdom literature for daily living.
The righteous are blessed and the wicked will suffer.
This is how the world is meant to be...
Ecclesiastes is wisdom literature for the vanity of life.
The righteous and the wicked will all perish.
Job is wisdom literature for the righteous who suffer.
The righteous suffer
This book is going to address difficult problems.
Mainly the suffering in a world under the reign of God.
Armchair vs. Wheelchair Questions
We have an option as we come to this book, we can try to answer it from the armchair.
Relaxed and kicked back, not really engaging with it.
Or we can realize that it is meant to be asked from the wheelchair.
Why do the righteous suffer?
The ultimate answer to this question never really gets answered in this book.
The righteous suffer because God, according to his infinite wisdom, chooses for them to suffer.
At first thought this may appear unfair or unjust.
But in the Book of Job, the reader is allowed to go behind the scenes and see the higher purposes of God behind Job’s suffering.
Unlike any other book in the Bible, we are going to see human situations from a heavenly perspective.
Something that Job or any other characters were NOT privileged to see.
It allows us to see what Job was never privy to.
It allows us to wrestle with the concept that God gave Job, who was a righteous man
How do the righteous suffer?
This book will both lead us and challenge us in unexpected ways.
This book is not merely academic.
It is both about people and for people who know suffering.
I know for sure that there are many of you who have faced grief and anguish.
This book will not just be an academic study for the head.
It will come beside us and remind us the world we live in.
And help us to understand suffering from God’s vantage point.
This book guards us from two extremes in our own day.
Prosperity Gospel
“Gospel of Wealth”
The prosperity gospel comes along and says,
“If you are poor, you should come to Jesus because He will make you rich!”
“If you are sick, come to Jesus because He will make you well!”
Now, we all know, the prosperity gospel is a bad thing.
We all know this, but I think there are still remnants of this kind of thinking within us.
They are the kind of thoughts like....
“I have been a good husband all week, God should reward me with _________”
“I have been a good Christian, why would God allow me to suffer?”
The second pitfall is even more insidious....
What happens to the prosperity gospel if you are already wealthy?
If you don’t have a “need” in the world, what becomes of the prosperity gospel?
Therapeutic Gospel
“Gospel of Self-Fulfillment”
It morphs from possessions into subjective benefits.
It moves from physical things into feelings.
“If you feel empty, then come to Jesus and he will fill you.”
“If you feel depressed, then come to Jesus and he will lift your spirits.”
“If you feel aimless, then come to Jesus and he will give you purpose.”
“… the gospel is not, ‘Oh Lord, my life is empty, fill me.’
The gospel is ‘Oh Lord, I’m an offence to you, rescue me.’ ”
And this book will slap both of these false gospel’s in the face.
And the hope is we will get a greater picture of the true gospel as we understand more fully the book of Job.
Now look down to verse 1....
Job 1:1 (ESV)
There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job...
Where was Job from?
Job was from the land of Uz.
Scholars say that Uz was in modern-day Arabia.
This means that Job lived basically in the middle of the desert.
Lamentations 4:21 (ESV)
Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz;
Based on this verse from Lamentations we can see that Uz was a land east of the promised land.
The important aspect that we need to see from this is simply that Job lived outside of Israel.
Outside of Israel
As one author said...
“[t]he importance of the name Uz lies not in where such a place is, but in where it is not”; namely, it is not in Israel.
What is interesting in this book is not so much what is there, but what is absent...
In basically every other biblical book, there is a genealogy or some sort of a reference point to other historical realities.
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