When All Hell Breaks Loose

WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE SEPTEMBER 10, 2018 This is our second show on Job. It’s taken me two weeks to figure out which direction I wanted to go with this series. I don’t like to do book studies – not because they are not worthy, they absolutely are – but sometime it’s harder to grasp the relevance when you just do an exposition of a book. Besides that, it’s been done. If you want that you can get that anywhere. It’s a little harder to come at a book like Job thematically, and that is what I think we are going to do. Today’s show is called, “When All Hell Breaks Loose”, and I don’t know about you but I kind of feel like that right now. The third show, as loosely planned, will be “The Uselessness of Platitudes” and we will talk about Job’s three friends. We will talk about Job as prophecy. The last one will probably look at what God says to Job and sort of the whole main point of point, at least as far as I am concerned. So that is loosely where we are headed. The series will probably be five to six weeks long. We are going to talk today about when all hell breaks loose, and I think that is appropriate because that happens to everybody. You’ll be moving right along and things are great and then POW – out of nowhere you get blindsided by something. Maybe it’s a diagnosis, maybe it’s a death, maybe it’s a car accident, who knows. I know when I had a car accident recently – thank goodness we didn’t get hurt – it could not have come at a worse time. I had just come home from a trip out of the country. I got home and I was supposed to be filming for my new study coming out in November with Ascension and I was on my way the very next day to do that, and lo and behold. You know how it goes. It happens to all of us. We talked a lot last week about Job as wisdom. We know at this point that as the author of Job is presenting this literary work to us that it is after the Babylonian captivity. The crash has come. Hell has broken loose. The tribes are scattered all over the place, and they are all in trouble. They are in poverty, in fear, and it seems like the author is almost pointing out what he has come to see: Israel’s take on religion and what religion had not come to the fullness of an understanding of suffering. We talked last week that is part of why Job is considered a book of wisdom, because the author is presenting a new way to look at the mystery of suffering. So this is national calamity, and because Israel is a religious nature, the two go hand in hand. A national calamity is a religious calamity. That is part of why I drew the parallel between the Church in America right now. We are experiencing something similar. The author of Job seems to be presenting this new, fuller consideration of what suffering is, where it comes from, why it happens, and especially people who consider themselves – or as we will see with Job, who God considers – to be innocent. Why does that happen? It seems also that because the Babylonian captivity happened because of the lives of luxury that the religious hierarchy lived – remember that this is a both a religious entity and a national entity all rolled up into one, both political and religious at the same time – in luxury while the people themselves were poor, it almost seems that because that is what happened in the Babylonian captivity that no only was selfishness mingled in with their lives and their religious lives and their national lives, but they felt that to be rich and to live in luxury was a sign of God’s favor. What we see through the Babylonian captivity is that is not the case. That is what the author of Job is trying to point out. It could even be that he himself was one of those people. Amos and Hosea were two of the minor prophets who preached fiercely against the luxury of Israel and especially of the nobles, and so it could be that the 091018_When All Hell Breaks Loose 1 | Page author of Job is writing to the very same people that Amos and Hosea preached to, and he could even have been one of those people himself. It’s just very interesting, I think, to consider how the author of the book of Job is separate from the actual book itself. I think it gives us some insight into what we are supposed to be learning from Job. He is pointing out, it seems, that there is more to a real, true faith and to religious practice than just happiness and plenty. He seems to be pointing out that there is a better faith in the old trust that the patriarchs had. I say that because the book of Job takes place in that patriarchal period. It is also interesting that Job himself was not an Israelite. He was from the land of Uz, which we will see as we read some of the texts. That was either far north to the east of the Jordan or it was far south to the east of the Jordan out in the desert area. Whether it was intended or it was instinctive, the author of Job has painted him as somebody who, with all of his virtue and the perfectness of his life, has spent his life almost in a dream and needed to be awakened. That is what we are going to see. I’d like to outline it for you. The first two chapters are called the prologue and those are in a narrative format, or prose. Then chapters 3 through 31 are presented through poetry, and those are the dialogues that Job has with four of his friends: Three are thought to be original to the actual book and then there seems to have been some sort of insertion with the fourth, Elihu, in chapters 32 through 37. Then God himself interrupts this dialogue that Job is having with these friends and God speaks directly to Job. He speaks directly to the friends but he also speaks directly to Job. Then we have Job’s response to God in chapter 42, which is one of my favorite sections of scripture (Job 42:1-6), which is also in poetry. The whole book, after chapters 1 and 2, is poetry. The epilogue of the book, which is in chapter 42:7-17 and that goes back to narrative prose. The poetry of the book is sandwiched, or bookended, with a narrative so we get the story. We get the backstory as to what happened to Job and why, and then we get what happened afterward. I’d like to read some of it. This is Job 1. “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil. And seven sons and three daughters were born to him. (Note: That’s a very round religious number that means complete) Also, his possessions were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred female donkeys, and a very large household, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the East.” So he is very rich, and they equated their wealth with the numbers of children but especially the flocks. “And his sons would go and feast in their houses, each on his appointed day, and would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. (Note: The appointed day was thought to be their birthday. So, they were feasting on their birthday. Their sisters were probably unmarried or they would not have been invited. All of the family was together.) So it was, when the days of feasting had run their course, that Job would send and sanctify 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 sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did regularly.” What he is doing is offering sacrifices just in case their partying got a little out of hand. What is interesting is that it says, “it may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God.” That word “cursed” means literally to dismember or to amputate. It’s not merely saying something blasphemous, it is actually to sever yourself from God, to withdraw from him. And I don’t know about you, but my very first reaction when I am in pain is to withdraw. I can totally see how this whole thing plays out. “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.” The sons of God is sort of a euphemism in the Scriptures for the angels. They 091018_When All Hell Breaks Loose 2 | Page came to present themselves in the court of God, and Satan came among them. “And the Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” It is important to point out that in the Old Testament, Satan was not a proper name yet.

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