Exegesis on Job
SERMON/EXEGESIS ON JOB
"There's always someone playing Job." Archibald Macleish wrote back in the 1950s. "There must be thousands...millions and millions of mankind Burned, crushed, broken, mutilated, slaughtered, and for what?"
This is a sentiment we can all identify with today. This last month the world was rocked by a serious of disasters. There are almost 40,000 people dead from the killer tsunami, and many of these we can be sure were good, dedicated Christians who had put their faith in God. Missions work in those countries has led to a very strong converted church in many areas. Still, thousands were killed. People lost their children, their spouses, all their belongings... Killer mudslides in California, war and terrorism in the Middle East... we have to sit back and wonder: where is this God who controls the wind and the waves? It's easy to understand when humans cause us suffering -- it's the sin of the world -- but it's a little harder when the forces of nature, which the Bible tells us respond only to God's voice, rise up to harm us. Job is famous for his patience in suffering, for his refusal to curse God. In a time like ours, with thousands dead from killed weather, we may be tempted to be more like Job's wife, and lose faith.
Job's wife is probably the most under appreciated character in the book of Job. Everyone seems to just dismiss her as another one of Job's trials. An old joke says that Job's worst torment wasn't the loss of his property or children -- it was the nagging of his wife! It's easy to forget that she had also lost all her belongings, and her children. Job's wife is a lot like any of us. She had married a good and a godly man. She had given birth to ten children, and raised them well enough that their father only feared they might do evil, he didn't actually see them doing it! She was a good woman -- and she also lost everything. So we shouldn't judge her too harshly when, at the end, she watches her husband suffering from a painful dehabilitating disease, and tells him that it's pointless, and he should just give up. That's what the whole "right to die" movement in America is about -- the idea that sometimes it's better to give up. This doesn't make her an evil person, necessarily. It makes her someone that was hurting, like us.
Job's wife is best known, of course, for telling Job to "Curse God and die." What she said was not good. She probably even knew it wasn't good. She didn't care. She'd suffered too much, and she just wanted it to be over. Job's wife was depressed. We hear a lot in the news these days about depression, and about all the drugs that doctors prescribe to treat depression. When people are depressed, they are not themselves -- they may do things that they wouldn't usually do. We need to understand that, from her point-of-view, God had pushed her to this point. Everything that Job went through, she went through too. Carol Newsom wrote of what Job went through: "this is a violence calculated to destroy the humanity of the one who is subjected to it... such violence also destroys the meaningfulness of the categories of innocence and guilt... Job casts the violence he has experienced as the expression of God's loathing for human existence."
If it was like this for Job, who was the moral pillar and head of the home, how much worse it must have been for his wife, who had given birth to those children they lost. So while we must remember that she misspeaks here, she has suffered as much as anyone here has ever suffered. And yet... despite the fact that she has suffered so much, and despite the fact that she is speaking out of anger and out of character here, Job still calls her a foolish woman. He says that she speaks as "one of the Foolish Women." Why is this? Because no matter how much we go through, no matter what God does to us, it is inherently foolish to claim any excuse for not being faithful to God.
To Mrs. Job, it may have seemed very reasonable to ask, as she does, "Dost thou still retain thine integrity?" She thinks that Job had good reason to rebel against...
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