“Road to Emmaus: Jesus in Wisdom Literature”
By Dayle K. Barrett
Sunday, May 25, 2024
Reading: Job 9:1-4, 32-35, 19:23-27
You know, sometimes we have questions; deep, nagging questions. I know I do. I have lots of questions. Like, why are we the only country in the world that sells its milk in bags? Deeper questions too, but that's one of them. If you're wrestling with the deep and serious things of this world, then you might want to spend some time exploring the wisdom literature in the scriptures. The wisdom literature in the Bible consists of about five books, depending on who you ask. They begin with the Book of Job and end with the Songs of Solomon. Some people count the Psalms, and some people don't.
They're asking deep and powerful questions in these books; ultimate questions, the forever kind of questions. The Book of Proverbs is a great book to read if you're trying to find your way through life. It's a collection of very wise sayings that deal with things like your relationship with God, your relationship to yourself, to others, and all in this framework of wisdom and folly. What is the wise and prudent thing to do when life happens?
The Book of Ecclesiastes is another powerful piece of wisdom literature because it answers that deep question: What's the meaning of life? In fact, it asks another question: Is there a meaning to life? That's a good one if you're grappling with despair.
The Songs of Solomon may be one of the sexiest books of the Bible. It’s a great narrative of passion and poetry and love that's all about the quest to find true love. It deals with marriage and covenants and all of these great things that we uphold in Christianity as well.
Then there's the Book of Job. The central question in the Book of Job is one that I'm sure we've all wrestled with from time to time: Why do bad things happen to good people? Isn't that a tough one? That's the kind of question that might keep you up at night, isn't it?
If you have any friends that don't believe in God at all, and you've had talks with them about faith, you might hear this challenge: If your God is all powerful and all knowing and all loving, then explain to me why there are little babies born with chronic illnesses that have never done anything. Explain to me why there are natural disasters that tear through entire communities and hurt the most vulnerable. Explain to me why it's always the nicest, most loving, kindest, most generous people who end up contracting some horrible disease. Why does it seem we say with certainty that only the good die young? Why does it seem that life just isn't fair, and bad things happen to good people?
So, in our wisdom literature, we have this book called Job. And Job seems to be a pretty good person. At the beginning of his story, he's obviously a righteous man. In fact, he's such a righteous man that he kind of takes up the job of priest for his community. He has a big family; he has lots of wealth and yet when his children go out and have something to eat and have a few drinks, he goes and makes a sacrifice at the end of that week, just in case they sinned in their hearts. Just in case, I'm gonna make a burnt offering before God. You'd think this kind of person who lived so faithfully would be protected and not have very much wrong in his life. But in the next scene, God is in the throne room and he's doing a check on his angels. They're coming in to tell him what they have been up to. I imagine maybe Gabriel walks up first and he asks, “Gabriel, what have you been doing?”
And Gabriel says, “Delivering messages. I'm working on that big speech for the incarnation. How does this sound? Hail Mary, full of grace….”
Then the next one comes up, “Michael, what have you been up to today?”
“We've done very well today, sir. My army of angels have routed 30 demons that were trying to get in Abraham's way. You'd be very happy with that.”
Then God looks across the room and says, “All right, Lucifer, what have you been up to?”
And Lucifer gives the kind of response that a teenager gives when they've been up to no good and they don't really want to tell you anything. “Well, you know, I've been up and down, you know, here and there, bit of this, bit of that, nothing really.”
Then God starts bragging, doesn't he? He asks, “Have you seen my servant, Job? He's brilliant. Blameless, upright man, fears God, hates evil.” He just rubbed Satan the wrong way. Satan's not happy at all.
He answers, “Yeah, but he's only doing that because you've blessed him so much. He's got a nice family, all kinds of wealth, land. If you let me ruin his life, he'll curse you to your face.”
And God says, “Go on then, don't hurt him, don't kill him, but go on then, we'll see what happens.”
Satan departs from the presence of the Lord and absolutely ruins Job's life. I mean, the worst things that can happen to a person happen to Job in one day. His seven sons and three daughters die. He loses his oxen and his donkeys, his camels and his sheep and his servants, all of it gone. He has no wealth, he has no family, he has every reason to storm off and start a cult or something. No point following this God stuff anymore. But he doesn't.
The Bible says that after he loses absolutely everything, he does this amazing thing. Job bows down and worships God. He says, “Naked did I come from my mother's womb and naked will I return. The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Oh, for a faith like Job's… Wow!
He loses everything and at the end of it all worships God because he believes there must be something more to this than what he can know and understand. More than anything, he realizes that God is still God no matter what it is that he's going through.
And if that was the end of the story, it would be okay, but it gets worse for Job. You see, God calls another council of his angels, and he checks up on what they're doing, and Satan walks up again, and God says, “Satan, what have you been up to?”
And he gives that response again, “I've been to and fro, here and there, getting up to a bit of this and a bit of that.
Then God starts bragging again. “Yeah, well, have you seen that servant, Job? Blameless, upright man fears God, hates evil, and he still has his integrity, even though you try to ruin his life for no reason.
Satan's not happy, is he? “Yeah, but you let me ruin his life... I haven't really touched him, have I? If you let me touch Job, he'll curse you to your face.”
God says, “Go on then. Just don't kill him.”
Satan leaves the presence of the Lord and through the next chapters of the Bible, Job is covered in sores and boils from head to toe. His breath stinks. He has no appetite. He can't sleep. He's wasting away. His skin turns black. He's in grief and despair. And he still refuses to turn from God. He still holds on to his faith. The only thing God seems to leave him with is his wife. And that might sound like a blessing, but his wife says, ‘why don't you just curse God and die?’ (I'm saving that quote for my next Valentine's Day card. Curse God and die lots of love, Dayle.) He has absolutely nothing and no one to support him. He has every reason you'd think to do exactly what his wife suggested and yet Job holds on to his faith all the way through.
We'll learn through his story, my friends, that there's nothing more dangerous. There's nothing that irks the kingdom of darkness more than somebody who can go through hell and come out with their eyes to heaven. Somebody that can lose absolutely everything and hold on to their faith because that person is unshakable. That person cannot be broken. That person can see that God is coming.
Through the rest of the Book of Job, we see Job wrestling, fighting with his friends, trying to make sense of what is happening to him. His friends try to tell him, that maybe it's because he’s sinned and God's punishing you. Another friend tells him, “Maybe God's testing you and putting you through this to see if it will make you a better person.”
Don't you love it when you're going through the worst stuff and all your religious friends seem to know why? Yeah, you kind of want to poke them in the eye, don't you?
Job comes to this place in chapter nine where he just can't make sense of it all. He wishes that he could speak with God face to face. He wishes that he could explain to God why this wasn't okay to be happening to him.
“How can a man be righteous before God? If one wished to contend with him, he could not answer him one time out of a thousand. For God is wise in heart and mighty in strength. Who has hardened himself against him and prospered?”
Job knows that God is wise and strong and righteous and in charge of absolutely everything. But maybe what he's wondering is, is God fair though? I mean, God holds the whole world in his hands, but is he a nice God? Is he a God I can trust? Is he a God I should keep my faith in? Does this all make sense? He wishes that he could contend with this creator of the universe. He wishes there was some mediator, some kind of recourse to make all of this fair, to make justice happen. Job can find none.
About a month ago, I tried to send a package. I needed to get a package to somebody in Hamilton, and I needed it there like, yesterday. But we were really busy at the church, so I didn't have time to drive it there myself. That would have been the easiest thing to do. I thought, you know what, I'm just going to go to a shipping company. So, I go to one of our large shipping companies. I won't throw them under the bus today, and I say, “Hey, I need to get this package to my friend like last week. Do you have a time machine or something?”
The guy says, “No, but we have priority shipping. We can get it there in 24 hours, and this is how much you have to pay.”
I thought, okay. It was a pretty penny. I wasn't happy about it, but I was like, “All right, give me the form.” I write out the address, check it, make sure it's all right, pay the money, and I walk out thinking it's fine, they're gonna get the package tomorrow.
The next day I get a message saying they haven't got the package. So, I go and check the tracking online, and it says, “Not delivered, no address on the label.”
What!? I pick up the phone and I call customer service, and I explain, “Hi, yeah, I just paid an arm and a leg for priority shipping, and it was supposed to get there today and it's not there yet.”
“It says you haven't got the address. So yeah, you didn't provide the address.”
I said, “The thing is, I'm looking at the address on the receipt I have. It's right here. It's all proper like it's supposed to be. Why didn't you deliver the package?”
It turned out it was a mistake at the store. They didn't punch it in properly, so it didn't end up on the label.
Well, I was a teeny tiny bit upset about this, wasn't I? I said, “okay, look, I understand things happen. You're just doing your job but is there something you can do? I'll give you the address. Can you make sure it gets there by tomorrow?”
“Well, I'm sorry, sir. But it takes 48 hours to change an address on a package. We have to relabel it. And then it has to be checked and all of this stuff. But we'll get it there as soon as we can.”
I said, “No, no, you don't understand. I paid an arm and a leg for it to be there today and you're telling me it's not going to be there for a few days.”
You can tell, right, this person's just reading a script off the computer screen. “Our policy states that blah, blah…” So, that’s it.
Then my inner Karen started welling up from inside of me and I said those fateful words. “Is there a manager that I can speak to? Someone that can actually make a decision here, can someone that can actually help me with my problem, can you get them on the phone?” Because I realised the person I was talking to couldn't do anything at all. So, I spoke to a manager, and they read through the same script on the computer screen as the first person I'd spoken to. I got nowhere.
I say all that to say that I wonder if... sometimes we wish that we could talk to God's manager. Not just me, right? Sometimes you pray and you feel like your prayers are just going up into nowhere. Is there someone else up there that I can speak to? Who do you answer to? Because this isn't right and I'm not getting what I need from this exchange. I need a mediator, I need an umpire, a referee. Who holds God accountable when God's not doing the God stuff that I want God to do?
Job says it like this, “He is not a man, as I am that I may answer Him, and that we should go to court together. Nor is there any mediator between us, who may lay his hand on us both.” Job is going through the pits, right? And he looks up and he wishes God could just come down here and talk to me. I wish God understood what I was going through. I wish God had to deal with some of this pain and this grief and this sorrow. Or at least if there was somebody who spoke God's language so that he could explain to God what's really going on. God, can I speak to your manager, please?
And it took years, didn't it? Scholars think that Job may have been the first book that was ever written in the Bible. But patiently, over hundreds, if not thousands of years, God answered the prayer of Job. God did come to earth and walk among us. God did feel our grief and our pain and our sorrow. God did experience bereavement. God did lose the people closest to him. God did suffer pain and brutality and much of it at our hands because what did we do when God came to earth and walked among us? What did we do after God had healed the sick and raised the dead and cast out demons and taught us how to live?
We took him to court, didn't we? We brought him before Pilate. We charged him with crimes against Rome and against religion. We let him bear all our sin and our shame and our guilt. We saw the wrath of God poured out upon himself. We nailed him to an old rugged cross. This is what Paul says in his letter to Timothy, chapter two.
“For there is one God and one Mediator between God and humanity, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time.”
Sometimes we wish that we could just grab God and bring him down here and say, “Why is this going on in my life?”
God has been here, my friends. God has walked this earth. He has felt everything there is to feel. God sent us his Holy Spirit so that he could still experience it among us as we, the church, are Christ's body. We do have a mediator. We do have somebody to bring our concerns to God and to bring God's wisdom back to us. And Job caught a glimpse of this at the deepest time of his despair.
You see, by the time we get to chapter 19, Job's life is much worse. His symptoms are increasing, and he has those pesky friends telling him that they know what's really going on. He says:
My brothers have been removed far from me. My acquaintances are completely estranged from me. My relatives have failed. My close friends have forgotten me. Those who dwell in my house and my maidservants count me as a stranger. I am an alien in their sight. I call my servant, and he gives no answer. I beg him with my mouth.
My breath is offensive to my wife. I'm repulsive to the children of my own body. Young children despise me. I arise and they speak against me. My close friends abhor me and those who I love turned against me.
But right at his deepest point of despair, at the point where he might have hurled himself off a building, he catches a glimpse of where God is in this situation, and he says:
Oh, that my words were written! That they were inscribed in a book! That they were engraved on a rock with iron and pen and lead forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and he shall stand at last on the earth.
My friend Job had no reason to hope in this life. Everything had crashed down around him, and he had nothing left it seems to give God thanks for in this life. But he knew that God was good. He knew that God was righteous. He knew that God was holy. He knew that God was faithful. And so, even though he couldn't see it, he knew his Redeemer would come.
God would stand on the earth, that everything that was wrong would one day be made right, that everything that was lost would one day be returned, that everything that was broken would one day be made whole, because the same God who came and died upon that old rugged cross also rose again from the dead. Job saw a glimpse of the hope of resurrection. He said, “After my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God.”
Why do bad things happen to good people? I don't know. But I do know that the worst possible thing happened to the best possible person when God came to earth and bore our sin upon the cross. But that wasn't the end of the story, was it? Three days later, he rose again with all power in his hands so that we who believe might know that our Redeemer lives.
So, it doesn't matter if they're talking about you, my friends. The lies might come out today, but one day the truth will come out because your Redeemer lives. It doesn't matter if you're sick and tired in your body, my friends, because after death will come a resurrection because your Redeemer lives. If your finances are a mess and you feel like you're about to lose everything, there's a day where you will stand on streets of gold on a mansion created by God because your Redeemer lives. There is a mediator between God and man. Your Redeemer lives. Your Mediator lives. Your Healer lives. Your Vindicator lives. Your Deliverer lives.
Because he lives, the hymn writer said, I can face tomorrow. Because he lives, all fear is gone. Because I know he holds my future, my life is worth the living just because he lives.
I don't know what you're carrying or what you're dealing with today. And I can't tell you that I know the end of your story, but if you read Job to the end, you'll see that God does right by Job before he dies. God returns to Job everything that was taken from him. And God will do right by you also because he is our Redeemer, my friends. He lives yesterday, today, and forever. Thanks be to God.