The video is a sermon on the book of Job in the Bible. It begins by describing the structure of the book, with a prologue and three cycles of speeches between Job and his friends. The first cycle focuses on the nature of God and the belief that suffering is a result of sin. The second cycle discusses God's providence and how he deals with wicked people, while the third cycle addresses Job's innocence and the sins he may have committed. The sermon emphasizes the importance of reading different translations alongside the King James version to fully understand the poetic and dramatic nature of the book.

As we definitely drew in our study the other day, the greatest loss of Job's health was not his wealth, his possessions, his family, nor his own health, but the feeling that God had abandoned him. The center of Job's life was God, not his possessions, not his family, not himself, but God. It was the loss of God that was the greatest problem of Job, and I think that's obvious as you read through the book. And it's a pitiful figure that you find in the book of Job, the greatest, most powerful, wealthiest man in the Near East who sat in the gate of the city as a judge, is reduced to abject poverty without a penny to his name, abandoned by his friends, lost his family, and he's sitting outside the city on the garbage dump, which is where he was. With a broken piece of pottery scraping his skin, trying to get a little relief from the disease that had afflicted him. And when people came out to dump their garbage, they dumped some of their verbal garbage on Job, and that was his condition. And I want to pick up that story in Job chapter 2, when his friends come to him. Verse 11 of Job chapter 2, Now when Job's three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came to each from his own place, Eliphaz the Semanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to condole with him, to comfort him. And when they saw him from afar, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they rent their robes and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights. And no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. Job's comforter has now become a proverb in our language. He's the individual who pours vinegar into a wound, who has bad news, tragedy, who tells you worse is still to come. He's got the opposite of the word comforter, and it comes from the book of Job, and it's a pretty true picture. I probably, before I'm through tonight, am going to be far too hard on these three men. They've meant well, and within the limitations of what they understood in their own life situation and the culture in which they grew up, they probably did everything they could for Job. And yet Job's comforters are with us still. We've seen something of Job's suffering, and we've talked a little bit about suffering in our own lives, and I hope it's been suggestive enough to get your own wheels turning in your mind as you think about our life situation. But I want to talk a little bit more about this book of Job, and about some of the ideas that spring from it, about Job's suffering, and some of the things that occur in the book. You're aware that the book begins with a prose prologue, the first two chapters that describe Job and his situation, the scene that goes on in heaven that Job never knows anything about, which is the direct cause of his suffering. And then you have his friends coming to visit him at the close of chapter two, and their sympathy opens the wellsprings of Job's heart. And in chapter three, Job just pours out his heart to these three friends, things he has not been able to say to his wife, things he has not even been able to say to himself. So, rise to the surface under the seeming sympathy of these three men who sit with him in his sorrow for seven days and seven nights, and you find the terrible words of Job in chapter three, cursing the day of his birth, cursing his conception, wishing he had never been born, wishing he had been stillborn. Then, beginning in chapter four, you get into the dialogue between Job and his friends, and that dialogue runs in three cycles of speeches. You notice this first cycle that really begins in chapter four, and goes through chapter 14. Each of the three friends has something to say to Job, and Job responds. And then a second cycle of speeches starts all over again in chapter 15, and goes through chapter 21. And then a third cycle of dialogue between Job and his friends starts in chapter 22, and in that third cycle of speeches, the third man, Zophar, drops out. We have no third speech of Zophar. In chapter 32, we pick up a new individual called Elihu, and he talks to Job from chapter 32 through chapter 37. And then, in chapter 38, God comes to Job. And from chapter 38 through chapter 42, verse 6, God talks to Job, and Job makes two brief responses. And then the book closes with a prose epilogue that describes Job's restoration, and his three friends' restoration. We read something of that the other day. In those three cycles of speech, it's just as if there's some sort of a feel for the book as you read it. And, I strongly suggest, particularly in your reading of the Old Testament, and especially in the book of Job, you read another translation alongside St. James' translation. You are not going to get the feel of the book. It's poetry, it's narrative, it's drama. What's going on if you confine yourself to St. James'? Put another translation alongside it, and try to get the feel of what's happening in this book between Job and his three friends. And, as you read it, you'll discover in this first cycle of speeches, they start talking about the nature of God. Now, you remember the basic premise on which they operated. The tragedy in a human life is the direct consequence of a man's sins. God is punishing a man for some terrible sin that may be hidden from everybody else, but God sees it, and he is punishing Job for this terrible sin. Now, they don't say that directly, but that's the premise on which they're operating. And, in the first cycle of speeches, they begin to talk about the nature of God, and it's a beautiful theological description of the glory and greatness of God. Eliphaz talks about God's greatness in creation. Bildad talks about God's justice. God cannot do anything wrong. Zophar talks about God's wisdom, the God who knows everything hidden from all human beings. And, it's magnificent, but underneath what they are trying to do is bring Job to repentance before so great a God. They don't say that yet. It's all discussed very objectively, but what they are saying is, Job, before such a great God, you cannot hide. And, the quicker you confess your sins . . . Now, they don't say that directly, but that's the implication. The quicker you confess your sin, the quicker will be your restoration. In the second cycle of speeches, we'll talk a little bit about why they have to go to the second cycle of speeches. They discuss the providence of God, particularly God's dealing with wicked people, and they recite horrible case accounts of terrible sinners who have been devastated in a moment by God because of their wickedness. And, they show, from their point of view, that invariably, in the human race, sin is met by the judgment of God. And, in the third cycle of speeches, they do not allow it. And, in the third cycle of speeches, they talk about Job and his sins. And, Eliphaz lays out the sins that Job has committed. Eliphaz does not know he has committed those sins. There's no evidence. But, he's convinced these are the sins that Job has committed, or he wouldn't be suffering this way. And, in that third cycle of speeches, Eliphaz lays out all the sins that he imagines Job to be guilty of, to explain why Job has suffered this way. Now, the reason they have to go through those three cycles of speeches is Job does not sit silently taking all this. Job comes right back in each one of these minutes with devastating rejoinders that leave him breathless. There's no way they can meet his arguments, because he's dealing with facts. And, they cannot stand the vehemence with which he rejoins. And, they are horrified at some of the things he says about God. And, in a panic, they come down on Job to save him, to deliver him from himself, and further sin. And, what horrifies these men is they see Job rapidly going to apostasy. And, in desperation, they try to rescue him from such a horrible end. And, Job is unmoved by all their arguments. There's nothing that they say that is any help to Job. They drive him deeper into despair, and they make him say things of which he has to repent. It's a terrible thing to be the cause of what makes a man repent. And, those are Job's friends. They drove him to say things that he never would have said without them. And, all their attempts to be helpful only went in the opposite direction. Now, don't gloss over Job's responses. He will say a few things to each man in turn, and then he will turn to God. Job is always going back to God. And, don't gloss over what Job says to God. Job accuses God of being wrong, of being unjust in his treatment of us. And, some of the verses that we have taught our children in Sunday school do not mean what we think they mean. That beautiful verse, when he is tried and he shall come forth as gold, that's not a comfort. That's an accusation against God. When you read the context of the 23rd chapter of Job, what Job is saying is the reason he can't find God, the reason God won't respond to him, is God is afraid. God knows that if Job ever gets hold of him, and forces God to hear him, and the whole thing comes out in the open, Job is going to be right and God is going to be wrong. And, the reason God keeps hiding from Job is that if Job's case ever comes to court, when Job is tried before an impartial court, he'll come out like gold, and God will come out tarnished. And, that's why God won't let Job find him. Job says a terrible thing. And, don't gloss over what Job says. But, I like the man. He's honest. Always be honest. And, he's desperate. Always be desperate. And, no superficial sab of religion is going to an honest, desperate man any good. But, these three friends have a basis from which they talk about their particular view. I've talked about the three suppositions, but each has a separate base on which he's operating. Eliphaz, obviously the oldest of the three, he speaks first. Eliphaz is operating on the basis of personal experience. He had a vision one night. A ghost came to him. A hair stood up on his head. He was so scared. And, out of that terrible vision came the realization of God's greatness and man's sinfulness. And, Eliphaz is operating and trying to help Job on the basis of Eliphaz's own experience. Now, it's good to have personal experience. We don't need that. But, that can never be the basis of our dealing with other people. It can never be the basis of truth. What happens to you may be truth, but it's not universal truth. And, your experience may be totally unique. It cannot be duplicated. And, you cannot insist that it be duplicated. And, God's dealings with you do not set up a law for God's dealings with everybody else. And, that was the limitation of Eliphaz. He couldn't see that. That if it were God that gave him this vision at night, and the way he describes the vision, I would think it came from the other direction, but he was convinced it came from God. If it were God that gave him that vision, that doesn't mean that what God did for Eliphaz, he's going to do for everybody else. But, what he told Eliphaz, Eliphaz is supposed to impose upon everybody else. And, we always have those people who, out of their own experience, are determined to impose that as a rule on everybody else. When I would say, God delivered me from so-and-so, and he'll do the same for you, how do you know he will? Because he did that for you. Has God committed himself to do that particular thing for every person who comes to Christ? Has he committed himself to do it precisely the way he did it for you, and when he did it for you? Don't make your experience the standard by which you judge everyone else. The way Eliphaz operated was on the basis of his own personal experience. Vildad, on the other hand, was probably one whom we know with a great deal more familiarity. Vildad was a man of tradition, and when you read Vildad's first speech, he goes back to what our fathers have taught us. He says, we don't know anything. It's the ancients who teach us, and he's a man of tradition. And, tradition is good. There's nothing wrong with tradition. Even in our human experience, it gives us a sense of kinship, a common tradition. There's nothing wrong with that. But Vildad was locked into tradition, and tradition becomes an evil when it becomes authoritative. The way the assemblies have always done things has nothing to do with God's truth. Our tradition can never be authoritative. Never! Only God's Word is authoritative. And, because as revered a man as John Milton Darby did something a certain way, it does not mean we are obligated to do it that way. I do not mind the way we do things, for instance, in the assembly. What I strongly object to is our saying, this is the Lord's own appointed way. I object to that because he never appointed a way. He taught us what to do. He never taught us how to do it. I take it he left a great deal to the leading of the Spirit of God and the common sense of spiritual men. Tradition is all right, so long as it does not become authoritative. And, when we get locked into our tradition, we are at the point where the Spirit of God is very, very limited in the way in which he can use us. And, one of the reasons this man was no help to Job is that he could not break out of the tradition of the ancients, because the ancients did not know the whole truth. If what they said were true, it was only part of the truth, and he was of no help to Job. Zelephar, on the other hand, seems to me to be the man of common sense. He has no time for deep thinking, he has no time for the discussion of tradition, and he can hardly stand Eliphaz's personal experience. What do you need all that for? A little common sense applied here and there will solve everything. This man comes at Job with his common sense, and he simply can't understand what Job's problem is. He doesn't understand why Job's having a problem figuring out what's going on. And, common sense is good, but there's too little of it. It's not as common as the term indicates. But, there's a great deal more to life than can be solved by common sense. There is no way to eliminate the whole feeling element of human experience, and one thing we have discovered in our own lives, haven't you? You know something rationally, but the whole way you respond to life and the way you act is not according to your rational consensus. And, what we say is, I know that intellectually, but I cannot get it down to the emotional level. I can't act on it. I know that, but I can't act on it, and that was the limitation of Zelephar. But, there's a further and a greater limitation on their help, and really, I suppose what I'm doing now is telling you how not to help people. These three men are the greatest examples of how not to help somebody in trouble. There was a greater limitation to their help than that. They began with a sincere attempt to help this man, but they were totally unprepared for his response. When he took the lid off his heart in chapter 3, they never dreamed of the death that were theirs, and they were totally unprepared for it. And, it's the things that Job said not only in chapter 3, but in his responses to them. If those things are true, the whole foundation on which they had built their lives has been rocked, and what they must do is now defend themselves against Job. And, they move from trying to help Job to defending themselves, and they turn on Job like a pack of dogs with a bone, because they have got to get him to say he's wrong in order for them to have any personal security. If Job is right in what he says, there is no security in their lives because they have built their lives on the idea, if you live right, you are going to prosper. And, if Job is right in what he says, the foundation on which they have built their lives has been destroyed, and they cannot rethink their way through to a new foundation until they turn ambitious and attack that man, particularly in that third cycle of teaching. And, they simply could not help. I want to say a couple of things more. We do not help people in distress by reflecting our personal experiences. Please, when I am in deep distress, do not come to me with your personal experience. Never say to me, I understand, because you don't. You don't. It's far better to do what Job's friends initially did, weep and be silent with him, than to open your mouth and say, I understand. Joe Bailey has a beautiful poem. If you don't get annoying by Joe Bailey's writing, please get them. He has a book of poems called, Psalms of My Life. In one of those poems, he discusses that. And, by the way, Joe knows what he's talking about. He buried three of his sons. And, in one of those poems, he talks about trying to help, trying to be genuine in helping people. And, one of the things he wants to say to a friend in distress is, no, I don't understand, but if you'll be patient with me, I will try to understand. And, in the meantime, I will be silent. Second thing I am going to say, and if it shocks you to begin with, please hear me out before you pass a judgment. Do not throw a verse of Scripture at a person in deep distress. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the verse of Scripture you use is going to be the wrong one. Joe Bailey talks about an occasion after the death of his third son, an eighteen-year-old named Satan, who was going out to the mission field, and for whom Joe obviously had a very, very warm and strong feeling. A good friend came to see him. As I recall, this was before the funeral, and they had known each other for years. And, as soon as he got in, he started talking to Joe Bailey about God, and about the Scriptures, and turning the passages of the Scriptures, and everything he said was true because of the Scriptures. But, when he left, Joe said, "'As much as I love you,' I was glad to see him go." Another friend, a close friend, came in and simply spent an hour that evening sitting on the couch beside Joe, saying nothing. And, when he got up to leave after the hour, he simply gripped Joe's shoulder and walked out. And Joe said, "'I was greatly comforted.'" Now, I'm not saying don't use Scripture. I said, don't prose Scriptures in people until you understand where they are, and what is going to be helpful. A great deal of what these men said was true. They said beautiful things about God. Not one thing that they said would help. Let me make a ridiculous illustration. Let's suppose, as it happens, you're a family, and I come to you and I say, 2 plus 2 equals 4. What I have said is true, but it is not helpful. Our Lord had that knack of saying not only what was true, but what was helpful. Do not just start throwing passages of Scripture at offended and threatened. I discover I do that to protect myself from being exposed to the depths of his feeling. I cut him off with a verse of Scripture. I tell him, here's what God says, and I just shut up. That ought to solve your problem. And, I discover in my own life I'm simply afraid to get into the depths of his distress with him, and I protect myself with passages of Scripture. And that's a terrible way for me to misuse the word of God. And so Job's friends really couldn't help him, because they were thinking of themselves, and not of Job. They started out thinking about Job, but they ended up thinking of themselves, and not of Job. So much for Job's friends. I really shouldn't have spent that much time on them. But read through what they say. I'm afraid I'm really not through with them. I'm going to come back to them as we talk about that 42nd chapter. I'm going to skip over Elihu, the fourth man. I think he's a very puzzling individual. You find all sorts of explanations for what he said, but I think he was something of a bridge to the appearance of God. I think the way Elihu talked to Job, putting himself on the common ground with Job, assuring Job they had nothing to fear from Elihu, inviting Job to respond without arguing, just respond, I think in many ways Elihu provided a bridge over which God could come to Job. Now, I'd like to be that kind of a friend to an individual. Not what I do, but somehow to provide the connection between that individual and God. Now, by the way, don't be deceived when you throw verses of Scripture at people in trouble, and they respond, yes, thank you. They're simply being polite. I would do the same thing. I would never tell you, shut up, get out of here, don't throw that passage of Scripture. I'd say, yes, thank you for God's truth, and let you go. And let you go deceived. Don't be deceived because people say, yes, thank you for that verse of Scripture. I remember being in a hospital room, praying to God that a preacher would get out of there, and not having the courage to tell him to get out of there myself. He became part of my afflictions, and while he's reading it, while he's going through this long prayer, I'm saying, oh God, deliver me, get him out of here, bring a nurse in here, get a doctor in here, get this man out. And yet, he was a well-meaning man. I know him. He was well-meaning. But to me, he was a joke of comfort. He only drove me deeper into despair. He added to my afflictions. I was sick before he came in. I was sicker when he left. I was not only sick in body, I was sick in heart by the time he got out of there. But Elihu seems to provide a bridge over which God can get to Job, and that's the real solution. God comes to Job, and that's all Job really needed. His greatest problem was the feeling that God had abandoned him. And if God abandoned him, and in life and in death he must do without God, it would have been better for him never to have been born, never to have come into the world, than to end up without God. And when God comes to Job, that's all Job needs. Now, when God comes to Job, and you see that starting in chapter 38 and going to chapter 42, verse 6, God meets two things in Job. The first thing God must deal with is Job's assumption that he can question and challenge God. And what God does is show Job the greatness of creation. Now, wait a minute. Those three friends had done the same thing. They had talked about the greatness of God in creation, and it hadn't helped. God comes to Job and talks about the greatness of creation and the insignificance of Job, and Job bows in humility and contrition. And the second thing God must deal with is Job's assertion that God is unjust in his rule of the world, and what God does. And it's beautiful. God has a terrific sense of humor, and if you can read the Bible without laughing on many occasions, there's something wrong with you. God has a terrific sense of humor. Job Bailey says he knows that because God created donkeys and parrots and middle-aged men. God's got a sense of humor. But God says, all right, Job, you come on up here with me, and you close yourself with divine attributes, and you go around and pick out all the proud people and deal with them adequately. Too much for you, Job? Well, that's all right. Then we'll get something a little easier for you, Job. Now, let's get on to the River Nile, and you know the crocodile down there, Job? Why don't you put a little ribbon around his neck and leave him out of the Nile to be your little garden pet? Or how about the hippopotamus, Job? Think you could handle him? Now, Job, if you cannot rule the crocodile, and you cannot rule the hippopotamus, what do you know about ruling the world? And, you know, one thing I get out of God's last speech to Job is a poignant feeling through him. Now, don't misunderstand me again. I think God is saying, Job, you know, you have no idea how hard it is to rule a world of human beings. You know, when God created man in his own image, in his own likeness, God did a terrible thing. Terrible in the sense of wonderful, and terrible in the sense of responsibility. God has made a being like himself, and a being who is like God, without those attributes that God cannot communicate to human beings like omnipotence and omniscience, but a being like himself. That being is capable of tremendous good and tremendous wrong, about which God can do nothing. Now, wait a minute. About which God can do nothing? Once God makes a being like himself, God is restricted in what he can do without violating his own character. He cannot utter an abracadabra and turn evil men into good men. Mythological gods of paganism can do that. That happens in fairy tales, but it never happens in real life. That would be to deny what God has created, and God can't do that. That would be to violate his own integrity. And if people persist in resisting God, there isn't a thing God can do about it. Do you remember that rich young ruler who came to him, and when our Lord laid out the conditions, that rich young ruler turned away sorrowing? And that's one of the few times in the Bible where it's written that Jesus loved somebody directly. Jesus, looking on him, loved him, but he let him go. Do you know why he let him go? Because he loved him too much to turn him into a robot. God does no arm-twisting. God will not violate his own creation, and it's because he loved him that he let him go. There are terrible restrictions in what God can do in the human race, because he's made us like himself. The ultimate solution—and God knew all this, of course, when he created man—but the ultimate solution is a tragedy. It's hell. Now, that's a tragedy, and I hope none of you ever preaches on hell with any sense of pleasure. If there isn't a catch in your throat when you talk about hell, don't you ever talk about it. Jesus wept over people on their way to hell. Oh, I know you were thinking of the denunciation of the Pharisees in Matthew 23. We like that word, woe. What do you do with that word when Isaiah uses it on himself? Woe is me. Is that some great, sadistic delight in punishing himself? But know the word can be translated, alas. And while Christ's anger is stirred against him, he weeps over the saints. Alas for you, Pharisees. The same word he used over Jerusalem, and its children, and the weeping women who lined the Via Dolorosa. Alas, alas. And the ultimate solution is part tragedy, it's hell. And hell was never made for human beings. It was made for the devil and his angels. God never made it for human beings. And I think God is saying to Job, as I read through what he says to Job in the last part of his speech to Job, Job, if you only knew how difficult it is to run a world of fallen human beings, and so much of life's tragedy is caused by godless people in their selfishness, trampling over other people. And God weeps helplessly until the day of judgment. He will not deny his own creation. But I want to say one more thing. In that epilogue we looked at in chapter 42, there's no need to reread that, and I'm running out of time anyhow, and I don't want to make another message out of Job. I mean, I do, but I don't think it would be fair. I do want to get into that book. I love this man, Job. Now, when I come to the epilogue, and you know, when you read through the book, in one sense, from traditional conservative Christianity, the epilogue is filled with pride, and yet it has no ring of truth about it when you think about it. Here are the fellows who are saying all the right things about God, and who are trying to shush Job up. Don't talk about God that way. It's irreverent. In fact, I think it's Eliphaz that says that. You're going to bring the fear of God to an end. You'll destroy all fear of God if you keep on talking that way. And, here are the men who say all the right things about God. They'd make elders in our assembly. They're spiritual men. And, here is Job who comes close to blasphemy. God, why don't you do what's right? You know you're treating me unjustly. You're hiding from me. If I could ever get you to court, I'd show you up. And, then when you come to the epilogue, it's Job that has to pray for them, not vice versa. And, God says to these men, you have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has. To say the right things is not necessarily to speak right about God. Reverence for God goes deeper than words, and the right words may cloak a deep-seated irreverence for God. And, that's the way it was, indeed, the case of these men without their ever being aware of it. How is it that Job ends up as the spiritual man, and they're the unspiritual men? And, as I say, as I read through Job's speeches, I catch my breath. Job, how dare you talk to God like that? And, yet, he's the one who was really reverent, and they were the ones who were irreverent. How were they irreverent? I think of J.D. Phillips' book, Your God is Too Small. If we don't have it on the book table, I wish we had. Your God is Too Small. And, they had a God that they could box up into a mechanistic, stimulus-response kind of existence. You push the button of right living, and the cornucopia of blessing opens. It's like going to Las Vegas and knowing the key to the slot machine. You just put the right coin in at the right time, and pull the lever, and out comes all the money. And, with all their words, that was their view of God. So, you just do certain right things, and God automatically responds, and out comes all the blessing. You don't even have to know Him. Who knows a slot machine? Who has a personal conversation with a slot machine? All you have to do is go through the right responses, and God will pour out the blessing. That's irreverent. That's irreverent. The second reason they were irreverent is because they had removed all the mystery from God. They had reduced God to a human level. Their concept of God was a pagan concept of God, not a Biblical concept. Oh, they said the right words, but they had removed all the mystery from God. And, that's horribly irreverent. Now, sometimes I get that way. I think I've got God programmed. Because I've studied a little bit of His Word, I think I know what God has to do, and what He doesn't have to do. And, I can tell when the Spirit of God is not leading somebody, and when He is leading somebody. I know all that. I can tell you that church, in spite of its success, is out of the will of God, and this church, with no success, is in the will of God. I know all that. And, I have brought God down to my level, that I understand God. And, I was horrified by what I read, something that was said by a medieval theologian. And, I say I was horrified by it until I started thinking about myself. This medieval theologian said to his students, I understand the Almighty, as well as He understands Himself. But now, wait. Before you get too hard on Him, don't we sometimes act that way? That's terribly irreverent. The third way in which they were irreverent, and therefore terribly unspiritual, is the way in which they were not.