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We'll begin just with starting us off with a prayer.
Let me get this stuff situated.
All right, let us go ahead and pray.
Lord God, we do thank you so much for this day, Lord. I thank you for the privilege and the blessing it is to go through books of your inspired word together as a church, Lord. God, I would ask today that through the reading, the teaching, the preaching, the worship, Lord, that we would glorify you in all these things, Lord.
That your majesty would just be understand a little bit more today, Lord. God, be glorified in the service and be known.
And we ask this in your name. Amen.
The book of Job. I'm so excited to go through this book. You might ask yourself, why are we going through the book of Job? Why are we in the Old Testament? Well, I'll be honest with you. Ever since we were in the book of Ruth, the Old Testament has just found a really wonderful place in my heart.
I've really enjoyed reading through things in the Old Testament and just seeing how all these things bring us to Christ. So for today, we're going to be in Job chapter 1, of course. Let us read for today.
Today is going to be the introduction to the whole book. And we're going to go through verses 1 through 5. So let us go ahead and read verses 1 through 5 today. And then we will go ahead and start looking through this text.
So verses 1 through 5, it says this. There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. And that man was blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil. Seven sons and three daughters were born to him.
His possessions also were 7 ,000 sheep, 3 ,000 camels, 500 pairs of oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants. And that man was the greatest of all the sons of the east. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day.
And they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. Now it happened when the days of feasting had completed their cycle that Job would send and set them apart as holy. And he would rise up early in the morning and offer burnt offering according to the number of all of them.
For Job said, perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.
Thus Job did continually.
Let's pray over this text specifically for this morning. Lord, I would ask today that in these five verses that it would introduce this book of Job in a way that makes us love you and lean on you all the more today, Lord.
God, as we go and venture through these things as a church and see all the ways that man fails or all the ways that we can find grief in life, Lord, let us find happiness and peace in the only one that gives that to us, Lord, and that is you.
So, Lord, let us be satisfied in you and you alone today. And we ask this in your name, Jesus Christ. Amen. So, the book of Job. This is an interesting book. There's a lot of speculation and consideration that goes into this book when we come to the book of Job.
There's a lot of different ways that I've even thought about how to introduce this book, on how to properly read it, to understand it, to understand what's going on. Something that's really blessed me this week that I would like to start us off with is, so in my seminary there's a pastor named Mark Chansky, and this pastor has done a really wonderful job teaching in lectures about hermeneutics, how we read the Bible.
The science of interpretation, how we understand God's word. And hermeneutics is something that we have to apply whenever we read any book. And so I'd like to just remind us today of just some really proper hermeneutics, some basic things for us to consider.
And I would encourage you to write these things down, go home and study them, and apply these things whenever we read any book of the Bible, no matter what text it is. But it's important, I think, to start off with hermeneutics prior to going into the book of Job.
And so the first thing I would like to invite you to think about, the very first hermeneutic, the very first principle of interpretation that we have to apply when reading any book, and that includes the book of Job, is that we have to consider all scripture as inspired and infallible.
And why is that the case? It's the case because they claimed it to be so, and it was validated through different miracles, such as the resurrection of Christ. And so because these individuals claimed that things were inspired, we too should see them as God breathed because the scripture promotes it as such, it teaches it as such.
And so that would be a presupposition that I would ask that you would have when we come to the book of Job, is know that the book of Job is inspired and it's infallible. The second thing I would like to invite you to do is to know that all scripture points us to Christ.
All scripture points us to Christ. And why do I say that? Well, that's what Jesus teaches in Luke chapter 24, verse 17. He says that all those things were pointing to Him as the Messiah. Now, a great pastor friend of mine said this, and I enjoyed this as a quote, when we think how all things should point to Christ, we should not look in the Old Testament and think that Christ is to be found under every single rock.
Like if a child was picking up a rock to look for a bug underneath it, we should not do that in the Old Testament. We should not look at verses one through five here and say the 500 female donkeys, that's Christ.
The 500 male donkeys, that's Christ. We can't do that. And this pastor friend of mine said, we can't look under every rock and think we'll find Christ under there. But instead, we should see that the rock itself is Christ because Christ is the rock.
And I would add to that thinking and say that we should look at everything in the Old Testament and see it as the pathways, the roads, the walks that led to that one and only rock, which is Jesus. And so when we consider those things, that's an important hermeneutic principle, I believe.
And in that, you can almost think if you were to go to Balanced Rock right now, the grandeur rock that's of the southern Idaho, you were to drive there right now, how many pebbles and rocks do you drive over when you're traveling there?
A lot.
What happens if you were to get out of your vehicle and you picked up the rock and you're like, ah, this is the Balanced Rock. This is the rock I was looking for. You'd probably laugh at the individual that did such a thing because it pales in comparison to the actual rock that you're traveling to see.
And likewise, in the Old Testament, we see types of rocks, things that look like the Balanced Rock. It looks like that which we are seeking, which is Christ. And those things are typology and shadows and all those kind of things point us to that.
But that's the second hermeneutical principle that we should consider is that all things point to us to Christ. All the paths lead to the rock, which is Jesus. And that includes the book of Job. Context is king.
That's the third thing I'd like you to consider. When we read any book, any literature at all, I hope that one of the most frustrating things that you've experienced in life is when you're misquoted and your quote is taken out of context and it typically is done to hurt your character.
I've experienced this lots in my life. And I despise it because it's taking something out of context to mischaracterize you as a person. And when we do that to the Word of God, it mischaracterizes God himself.
And so remind yourself of the context continually. Where were they at when they were writing this? When were they at when they were writing this? And to whom were they writing these things to? And the next thing is a principle called the analogy of faith.
And that hermeneutical principle essentially just means that no scripture can contradict another portion of scripture. And because that is the case when we come to an obscure or difficult-to-understand scripture, we ought to go to the clear to help us understand the not-so-clear.
And that will help us come to the right conclusions in God's Word. Now, taking all those things together, especially some of those hermeneutical principles like the who, the what, and the when was this written, that's the question we have to come to when we ask about the book of Job.
Many Christians, and I think rightly so, would say that the book of Job is one of the oldest books of the Bible. And I would agree with that. I think that it's actually the oldest story that we have in the book of the Bible.
Now, you might say, well, isn't the book of Genesis older? Yes, the book of Genesis is older in the sense that it records previous dating things in the book of Job. It records for us the very beginning, right?
Job didn't happen in the beginning. So Genesis predates Job in this way. However, who was the one that recorded for us Genesis? It's Moses. So this is after God's covenants have been revealed. It's after records have been written, so on and so forth.
So when was the book of Job written? It's difficult to say exactly. And it also depends on to whom do you think actually wrote it. When you go through the entire book of Job, there isn't a single author that claims the title of writing the book of Job.
And because of this, there's a lot of speculation on who wrote it. The idea, though, that I would encourage you to take that will apply when we go through the book of Job together, regardless of who you come to the conclusion on, who is the actual author of the book, is that Job, when he speaks in this story, or when his friends speak in this story, they use the title of God called El Shaddai, right?
That's how they refer to God continually. It is only when the narrator gives narration. So look here with me real fast. When you look here at verse 6, Now it was the day that the sons of God came to stand before Yahweh, or your translation of this might say, the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
This term Yahweh is never used by Job, but only the narrator. This is interesting because this is contextually important for us to understand what's going on here in this book. The name Yahweh came about during the life of Abraham, I believe is when it's first recorded for us, and also specifically, exactly, Moses as well.
And the title Yahweh is the covenantal name of God. And so, because the very first verse in here that says the land of Uz, we have other places in the Old Testament that reveal to us that the land of Uz was a foreign land.
It is thought that Job was most likely not a child of Israel in the sense that Abraham and Moses was a child of Israel. So he didn't know the title Yahweh. And Yahweh was most likely not even revealed to the children of the earth at this time.
They had only known God as El Shaddai at this point. We should conclude that the book of Job, the story of Job, that took place in a foreign land, predated Abraham and Moses. It was before the title Yahweh could be revealed.
And so this would place the book of Job really, really early in the book of Genesis. Not only this, but in the end of the book of Job, we are told how old Job was when he died. He died at the age of 140 years old.
That seems pretty typical for the early Genesis characters that we have as we see their lives have been prolonged and they become shorter and shorter and shorter. So we can say that the book of Job is early, very, very early story.
And what most likely happened is that it was a story that was passed down through oral tradition, through verbal traditions where they would tell the story over and over and over again.
It was recorded.
It was told to other individuals of this mighty man named Job and the faith he had in God. And what my speculation is, the traditional statement is that Moses is the one that authored the book of Job for us in this inspired way.
Some people might say it's King Solomon. There's good reason to conclude that. Whatever your conclusion is, what most likely happened is that this man Job, his life is recorded. It's then passed down through verbal tradition.
A Israelite in an inspired way takes the story and he adds to it the pictures of the narration that are very important for us, thus adding the title Yahweh in this text. So when we read this, we should understand that it is inspired because it was written by a person that claimed to have it be inspired in this way.
It was most likely, in my opinion, Moses that wrote this. Some would say that it's Elua from later on in this text. I don't think it would be him. Some would say King Solomon. I don't think it could be him.
I don't think it would be him. But that is the important part that we have to take away from us for dating this book. So that's a very key hermeneutic of when was this book written. In Jewish tradition, Job, the book of Proverbs, and the book of Ecclesiastes were all held together in a book called the Ketuvim.
And this was considered the books of wisdom. And because it's considered the books of wisdom, many Christians have looked at the book of Job throughout the years and they have said that this book is purely poetic and symbolic.
And I would encourage you today not to have that understanding of the book of Job. And the reason I say that is the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes gives us a lot of principal realities and uses pictures of wisdom and all these it paints us in a more poetic sense these individuals and a more symbolic sense those individuals in the book of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs.
However, the book of Job is different because it gives actual characters. It gives actual scenes. It gives us actual stories. Now does this mean that it can't have poetic language in it? No, it means that poetic language has been laced into the actual story of Job, which is a totally good thing when we consider that it's inspired and infallible.
So please, when you read this book, remember that this is a literal historical event that is talked about that has poetic language that's laced throughout it. And the one reason I would tell you that this was an actual individual, and this is the most important one, because we understand that when Scripture speaks about another story and it gives us further clarity on it, that must be the meaning of it.
In Ezekiel 14, verse 14, we have God Himself speaking and it says, This is God speaking. Does God speak of Job as a real historical person or as a symbol of what the Christian ought to look like in life?
He paints him as a real historical person. He says, So this is a real story that takes place for us here. So let us look here at verse 1 through 5 and consider those very important principles that we just talked about.
Job 1, 1 through 5, it says, Who in this room, and I'm a fan of this series and so I hope everyone raises their hand, who in here has ever seen Star Wars before?
Right?
And the very first thing of any Star Wars movie is you get this lettering that goes up the screen, right? That yellow lettering that fades to the background, right? And in those stories, what happens when you read that is it gives you just really short, immediate context and then you're thrust into the movie, right?
In the middle of whatever it is that's going on in that story, right? You get thrust into it and it's taking place. That's essentially, when we read this, have that in the back of your mind. This beginning context, we don't have recorded for us exactly what took place before.
What we just have is this short narration that gives us and thrusts us right into the scene of Job, just like this Star Wars type of introduction goes. There was a man in the land of Uz. Almost you could think in a galaxy far, far away, right?
There was a man in the land of Uz. Where's the land of Uz at? It's recorded for us in the Old Testament. Several times, this land of Uz, but no one really knows where the land of Uz is. There's a lot of different speculation on where this place is.
It was a real historical place, but again, this author, this narrator, most likely Moses in my opinion, Moses is writing in here, there was this man in the land of Uz. His name was Job. Jeremiah 25, verse 20, And all the foreign people, all the kings of the land of Uz, all the kings of the land of the Philistines, even Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod.
Interesting, right?
So this is a real historical place, this land of Uz. And not only that, Jeremiah 25, verse 20, records it for us as foreign people.
Foreign people.
That's important for the character of Job when we think about this. Job was most likely not a Israelite. That's pretty important for us when we consider that the whole Old Testament usually consists of Israelite people, right?
There's a whole book dedicated to Job who's not an Israelite. So, as we know and we've seen several times in the Old Testament, names typically mean very important things for us, right? There's two ideas of what the name Job means.
Many would say that it means persecuted. When you read the whole book of Job, you could see that means persecuted, right? That seems to be fair. There's another thinking when you take the name Job, and I don't know Hebrew, but when you take the name of it and you look at the two different parts of it that's put together, is that it means where is the father?
Now, this meaning for the name of Job, I believe, is really important for the whole story because when we look at the life of Job, or even he himself was to look at his own life, he would say he's probably persecuted, and you might even ask where is the father in the life of Job?
When we look through every single page and we ask ourselves where is the father, I hope that as a church we would see that the father is present at all times in this story. The father has never departed.
The father is very intimately wrapped up into the story of the life of Job. Now, when we look at this man Job, where is the father? It describes him as blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil.
So this is an interesting text because many people would look at this and they would say, look, Job is a salvific, righteous, sinless man. That's not what this text is saying because Job himself, later on in this book, would openly admit that I am a sinner.
He would admit that he is wronged against God in these ways. What does this mean, blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil? It's that he lives a life that you and I would look at and we would see a convicted man that proclaims, not the title Yahweh because Yahweh hasn't been revealed yet, but he claims to know who God is, and we'll see some more reasons why that's important for us here in a little bit.
He claims to know who God is, and he's acting in a way that mimics his internal morality that he's claiming to have. So we talked about the New Covenant a little bit with the little ones up here today.
We've seen that in the book of the Hebrews, that when we are born again and we have faith in God, that God writes the law of God on our hearts. And it's not merely just an outside thing now, but it's an inward reality for us.
When I look to the life of Job, and right here in this text, I look at this and I would have here, I could call Job a brother in Christ. He's been born again in this way. He fears God. What did we read today for the book of Proverbs?
The fear of Yahweh is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. Why was the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes met together with this book of Job? The book of Proverbs gives us a lot of great things about how a moral person should live.
What do we have for the book of Job? A man that has conviction in his heart, that fears Yahweh, he has wisdom, and he's living in a certain way that mimics what the book of Proverbs tells us how to behave.
Job is living like this. Also, why the book of Ecclesiastes? What did we see in the book of Ecclesiastes?
Havel.
Our life is nothing but vapor and smoke. When we look all throughout the book of Ecclesiastes, I love it, because it almost seems to make you question, it makes you ask several questions throughout the book, and one of those questions is why.
You could be living a great life where you're living for God,.
And cancer hits.
Life is havel, smoke. It's vapor. It disappears very quickly in some cases. We think about any tragedy, even in our own church, havel just disappears so quickly. Life is a vapor. What do we see in the book of Job?
We've only read the first five verses we're about to read. Not right now, not today, but as a church we'll read here soon.
All his life, all his possessions taken. Death comes about. When you read this book, you would see that the mighty enemy, that is death, is very present in the life of Job. Well, who has defeated this death?
I would like to remind us of this right now.
Christ Jesus.
So we should have a greater hope in Christ after reading those terrible accounts of his family dying in this very life is a vapor type of way. I hope that makes sense why now you would have a Jewish person that would be carrying around Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job in this way.
It makes a lot of sense to me. So let us look here at, and he's turning away from evil. These are just all good things I would encourage you today to walk in a way that is blameless, that no man can accuse you of true wrongdoing.
It's true that people will accuse you every time that they get an opportunity to find offense, they will accuse you. But try to walk in a way that is clear to God's word that no one can accuse you of breaking God's word in a way.
Walk upright in this way. Walk with wisdom, fearing Yahweh, fearing the Lord, and turning away from evil in all times. This to me appears that Job has been born again. In verses 2 and 3, we have something interesting that takes place.
It says, seven sons, three daughters were born to him. Now, before we progress to verse 3, I'd want to be clear in saying this. This is true. Job had seven sons, and he had three daughters. What does 7 plus 3 equal for us?
Ten, right? Ten.
We're going to see these numbers take place a lot in this book right here, right now. And we're not only going to see it right here, right now, but these are numbers that God uses continually in all of the Bible.
It's 3, 7, and 10. And they typically mean completeness and perfection in these ways. We see that all throughout the book of Revelation. 3, 7, and 10. Over and over and over again. So it's true, Job had a literal seven sons and a literal three daughters that were born to him.
These things point us to that reality of God's numbering in this text. He also says his possessions were 7 ,000 sheep, 3 ,000 camels.
What does that equal for us?
7, 3, and 10, right? We see that over and over again. 500 pairs. What is 500 plus 500? 1 ,000, right? That's that 10 number. We see this over and over again. 500 oxen, 500 female donkeys, and very many servants.
And that the man was the greatest of all the sons of the east. Job has been recorded for us as this mighty man that has been prosperous in life. It seems to be a man that not only does he have the wealth and the prosperity that many in life seek after, but he's also doing it in what way?
Blameless, upright, fearing the Lord, and turning away from evil. He's not doing anything wrong in anything in life. There's been several times that I've been very disappointed to hear Christians respond to, and this was from years ago, that some would think when tragedy happens, it's because, oh, you have hidden sin in your life.
And it's true. There's no doubt that each one of us has sin in our lives. But the point of this is Job would appear to not have this evil aggressions that we would see other men have today. But yet these things are still taken away from him.
What does the book of Ecclesiastes tell us again?
Life is a vapor. Right?
We have to have hope in something that goes far beyond this life, and I believe that's what Job has in here, and it'll carry him through a lot of these tragedies that are about to happen. But it tells us in here that those seven sons and three daughters, it says his sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day.
So how many days in a week are there? Seven, right? So there's seven sons. So each son was assigned one Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and so on and so forth. And each one of the sons would throw a feast on that day, on that night most likely, and invite the entire family over.
It says that they would invite the sisters, the three sisters, over to eat and to drink with them. So this was a merriest time. This was a time where they were eating and rejoicing. They were prosperous.
Now, it would appear, you think about yourself as if you're a father in this room, and you think about your children, and you see your children, and they're inviting each other over to celebrate things.
Does this look like they're in a good relationship in their family? Yeah. It looks like Job has done a good job at raising up his family. It appears that his family is getting along in this wonderful way, this picturesque scene of this large family of ten children are all loving one another.
And this is something that they should be celebrating over, right? How do they celebrate? They drink and they eat. They're enjoying the company of one another in this way. Now, again, we have to address the elephant in the room.
Drinking in this text would have been drinking alcoholic beverages. This is no way is talking or teaching us to be drunk in this, but that it is teaching us to enjoy the fruit of the vine in this manner, to celebrate with one another is a totally acceptable thing.
And in verse 5, so this family is doing these things. In verse 5, it says, Now it happened when the days of feastings had completed their cycle. So meaning that the seven days had ended. So it was after all seven children were able to provide a celebratory meal for the family, that Job would send and set them apart as holy, set them apart as holy.
And he would rise up early in the morning and offer burnt offerings, according to the number of them all. For Job said, perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. Thus Job did continue.
When we look at this text, what comes to mind in verse 5? What is Job doing? How is Job acting in this way? Was there any mention of a temple in this text? No, there is no temple in this text. Is Job acting like a priest in this text?
Yeah, he is. This is another reason why it is thought that Job is such an early text, is that most likely Job has heard the stories of Adam and Eve in the garden, of God himself offering a sacrifice to cover them and be sent out into the world with.
And so Job, putting these things together, hearing about the stories that his grandfather and his great grandfather told him when he was a little boy, about the sacrifice that was made, he has some rationality that sin is met with death, and therefore we need to kill something to show God that we are sinners.
Job is acting like a priestly father in his day. Think about that in our own context of the world today. How many men and father trade in their priestly duties, their priestly type of fatherhood, to another organization?
Whether it's a religious organization or a worldly one, men do this continually. Fathers, your children are your children. Sacrifice for them. Serve your holy God on their behalf. Job set a special day aside certain animals to be put to the slaughter, and he worked on their behalf.
Now I'm not telling you to follow Job's example in the sense of go and grab some animals and kill them, because we know that the blood of animals never takes away sins. But what this is teaching us is fathers are to act in this priestly type of manner.
It doesn't make you a literal Levitical priest as some false religions would profess, but you are to act and mimic your Savior, which is Christ and your family, and sacrifice for your children. I promise you this, that God does hear the sacrifices that the father makes on behalf of his family.
Job would do this continually. He did this week in and week out for his family. He would set them aside as holy. He would offer up the animals as a sacrifice, a burnt offering for every one of his sons.
And it says that perhaps Job is reasoning in his own heart, perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts. This word cursed in this text is getting at the point of that they were false professors, that they actually in some way in their vanity did not actually love God or glorify Him in the previous actions that they did in the celebrations, that they actually don't know who God is.
And so Job is saying, my sons, my daughters, I want them to be believers in God himself. I plead with God, please make my children know who you are. Please, if they have been false professors and in all their activities, in their celebrations, in their work in my fields, if they have done these things in vain, God, please forgive them and help them fear you.
Job did not do this once, but he did this continually. In Hebrews chapter 10, verse 11 through 13, And every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies are put as a footstool for his feet. Brothers and sisters, as I made mention of earlier, Christ is that rock that all Scripture is pointing and leading us towards.
When we look at this verse, verse 5, we know that the very animals that Job was sacrificing pointed towards the Lamb of God that would take away the sins of the world. And he has come and he has mediated for us.
Just as Job was mediating for his children, Jesus, the far better and the far more, has mediated for you and I by removing our sin, by dying on the cross for us as all the children set up here today. He stands at the right hand of the Father, continually mediating for us.
I hope that our takeaway from these verses, verses 1 through 5, in this scrolling Star Wars-esque type of scene that is set up for us, in verses 6 and on, we're going to be introduced to what the narrator says is happening in the background of Job's life.
It pictures for us the scene in heaven where Job is about to lose all the things that were just talked about in this narrator's introduction to the life of Job. And so please make your minds ready for that.
How would you today, if God saw it fit for you to experience the life of Job and you lost it all, how are you going to respond? Are you going to shave your head, tear your vestiture, and go out and worship the Lord?
Or are you going to seek the actual items themselves and your soul dying with them just like they have died? Let us pray over these things as we consider them. Lord, we thank you for this day. We thank you for Job.
We thank you for this wonderful book. Lord, I would ask that as we continue to go through this text, we would recognize the loving hand of the Father that is in the presence of Job even in this text. And the questions that are asked by each one of us in our own minds, Lord,.
