Proper 23
Preaching
Preaching And Reading The Old Testament Lessons
With an Eye to the New
The story of Job is presented to us primarily through a series of dialogues that Job carries on with three so--called friends named Bildad, Zophar, and Eliphaz, in chapters 4--27. Those three friends visit Job in order to console and comfort him. But they are so shocked by his condition that for seven days they wisely do not say a word (2:11--13). However, they then, quite unwisely, take it upon themselves to give Job advice in order to improve his condition. (A fourth friend named Elihu also offers his counsel in chapters 32--37, but the suffering Job does not even bother to reply to him.)
The advice that the three friends offer stems from popular and somewhat misunderstood Wisdom teaching. They hold the view that God does good to the righteous and brings evil in the form of suffering on the unrighteous, a view still widely held in our time. The friends are sure, therefore, that Job must have been faithless in some way toward God, and that God is punishing him for it.
In the passage immediately preceding our text for the morning, Eliphaz admonishes Job to confess his sin, to return to the Lord, and thus be at peace. "Agree with God, and be at peace," instructs Eliphaz, "thereby good will come to you ... If you return to the Almighty and humble yourself, if you remove unrighteousness far from your tents ... then you will delight yourself in the Almighty ... You will make your prayer to him, and he will hear you" (22:21, 23, 26--27). In such a manner many sufferers in our day have heard someone tell them to return to God and everything will be okay.
In reply to that facile and unfeeling advice, Job cries out, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him!" (v. 3). And that is the problem for many of us too, isn't it? We cannot find God. God is silent. God apparently has withdrawn his presence from us. He hears no pleading prayer, sees no desperate suffering, answers not a word. And we are left staring into a void of an empty heaven. As Job utters at the end of our text, "I am hemmed in by darkness, and thick darkness covers my face" (v. 17). The prophet Amos proclaimed that the problem for Israel was that God had broken out in a roaring against his people (Amos 1:2). The problem for Job, and sometimes for us, is that God is silent.
Why is that the case? Is it that God has withdrawn from us because of our sin? The prophets also preached that such could be possible. Amos said that his compatriots would wander from sea to sea and shore to shore, seeking the word of the Lord, but they would not find it (Amos 8:12). The Third Isaiah (Isaiah 56--66) proclaimed, "Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear" (Isaiah 59:2). But that is not Job's problem. He has been faithful to God all his life and has always served and loved his neighbor. The friends are quite wrong about the reason for Job's suffering, as persons are often wrong about someone's plight in our day. We err grievously when we attribute all problems and suffering to sin.
So why is it that we sometimes cannot find God and think he is absent? A second possibility: Are we looking for him in the wrong place? The Lord God, in his mercy, has provided all of us the "means of grace," as the church calls them, the avenues through which God comes to us and speaks to us and works in our lives. God gives us his word, written in the scriptures, but we may never read it or listen to it preached. He promises to be with us in his Spirit through the means of the sacraments, but we may never understand them or open ourselves to the communion with the Lord that they afford. Maybe God seems silent to us because we seek him in the wrong place. But once again, that is not Job's problem. Job searches desperately for some avenue to God. He even says that he would be willing to enter a courtroom with the Lord and lay his case before him. Then, Job asserts, God would listen (vv. 4--6).
And yet, and yet, Job knows the foolishness of that, because he knows who God is, and he realizes that he could not possibly contend with the Lord. God is too awesome, too overwhelming in his glory, too dreadful in his might for anyone to stand up before him (vv. 15--16). Job is not fooling with the sentimental little godlets that we sometimes imagine for ourselves. Job knows the character of God, because he has lived in God's presence all his life. But maybe that is our problem, that we think God is silent because we are seeking the wrong kind of God.
But the problem is still there, isn't it? We cannot find God. I once had a professor in seminary who said, "We should stop talking about 'seeking God.' God isn't lost. We are lost." And the message of our text and of the scriptures in their entirety is that all of us lost ones have been found. We cannot seek God, but God has sought us and found us. He finds Job, at the end of our story, and comes to him and speaks to him. And he found us in our Lord Jesus Christ, who came in our flesh, and shared our suffering, and heard our pleas, and promised that he would never leave us. Yes, thick darkness may surround us at times. Yes, it may seem as if no prayer is heard, and no divine presence is with us. Yes, we may suffer pain and "outrageous fortune" in this sin--pocked world of ours. But Christ made a promise to us, and he will always keep it. "Lo, I am with you always," he said, "to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:20). Trust that promise. Cling to it. Even when you can't experience it. For it is now and will always be true.
Lutheran Option: Amos 5:6--7, 10--15
These verses actually form a portion of a funeral lament that God utters over his people in northern Israel in the eighth century B.C., through the words of his prophet Amos. The lament begins in verse 1 and ends with the mourning wailing described in verses 16--17. God has determined that he will make an end of his people in the northern kingdom of Israel (8:2; cf. 3:15; 8:10), an end that will come in their fall to the armies of the Assyrian Empire, in their exile, and in their disappearance from history. Our passage details some of the reasons why that end has been determined.
The theme of the whole is set forth in verse 7: Israel turns justice to wormwood (a bitter wood used for medicine), and casts down righteousness to the earth. The reference is to Israel's treatment of its poor peasant farmers in the courts of law which were held in each city at the gates. City elders made up the personnel of the courts. We read in verse 11 that fines were exacted from the poor in the form of some of their grain. The elders then sold the grain and used the proceeds to build fine stone houses, unlike the clay houses of the poor. Or they bought the best vineyards in the best fields. In verse 12, we also learn that the elders accepted bribes to influence their judgments. Moreover, when more honest elders objected and attempted to render just judgments, they were scorned and drowned into silence by the avaricious others (vv. 10, 13). That could remind us of the fate of those who refuse to toe a "politically correct" line in our own society. Sometimes truth falls victim to distorted public opinion, as it also did in the court of Pontius Pilate on a spring day in Jerusalem.
In the midst of a corrupt society, Amos admonishes his people to "seek the Lord," and to "seek good" (vv. 6, 14), which is a repetition of the same thought, because that which is good, according to the Bible, is not some virtue or ideal lying outside of God, but God himself. "No one is good but God alone," our Lord said (Mark 10:18). If we would know what is good, therefore, we must know it in the presence of God, from his commandments and teachings, his actions and words.
Amos tells his sinful people that if they mend their ways, and turn and seek the Lord, then "it may be" that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to a remnant of them in his judgment on them (v. 15). But God is not coerced, even by our turning, and the grace of God is never earned, but only freely given. In Israel's case, in the days of Amos, she passed up too many opportunities. God is the one source of her life (v. 6), but she has chosen death. The God who is life, is also a consuming fire (v. 6), and Israel will be consumed. The funeral lament is promised at the end of the chapter (vv. 16--17). In similar manner, our Lord Jesus tells us that "whoever denies me before others, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 10:33). Let those who have ears to hear, hear.
The advice that the three friends offer stems from popular and somewhat misunderstood Wisdom teaching. They hold the view that God does good to the righteous and brings evil in the form of suffering on the unrighteous, a view still widely held in our time. The friends are sure, therefore, that Job must have been faithless in some way toward God, and that God is punishing him for it.
In the passage immediately preceding our text for the morning, Eliphaz admonishes Job to confess his sin, to return to the Lord, and thus be at peace. "Agree with God, and be at peace," instructs Eliphaz, "thereby good will come to you ... If you return to the Almighty and humble yourself, if you remove unrighteousness far from your tents ... then you will delight yourself in the Almighty ... You will make your prayer to him, and he will hear you" (22:21, 23, 26--27). In such a manner many sufferers in our day have heard someone tell them to return to God and everything will be okay.
In reply to that facile and unfeeling advice, Job cries out, "Oh, that I knew where I might find him!" (v. 3). And that is the problem for many of us too, isn't it? We cannot find God. God is silent. God apparently has withdrawn his presence from us. He hears no pleading prayer, sees no desperate suffering, answers not a word. And we are left staring into a void of an empty heaven. As Job utters at the end of our text, "I am hemmed in by darkness, and thick darkness covers my face" (v. 17). The prophet Amos proclaimed that the problem for Israel was that God had broken out in a roaring against his people (Amos 1:2). The problem for Job, and sometimes for us, is that God is silent.
Why is that the case? Is it that God has withdrawn from us because of our sin? The prophets also preached that such could be possible. Amos said that his compatriots would wander from sea to sea and shore to shore, seeking the word of the Lord, but they would not find it (Amos 8:12). The Third Isaiah (Isaiah 56--66) proclaimed, "Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you so that he does not hear" (Isaiah 59:2). But that is not Job's problem. He has been faithful to God all his life and has always served and loved his neighbor. The friends are quite wrong about the reason for Job's suffering, as persons are often wrong about someone's plight in our day. We err grievously when we attribute all problems and suffering to sin.
So why is it that we sometimes cannot find God and think he is absent? A second possibility: Are we looking for him in the wrong place? The Lord God, in his mercy, has provided all of us the "means of grace," as the church calls them, the avenues through which God comes to us and speaks to us and works in our lives. God gives us his word, written in the scriptures, but we may never read it or listen to it preached. He promises to be with us in his Spirit through the means of the sacraments, but we may never understand them or open ourselves to the communion with the Lord that they afford. Maybe God seems silent to us because we seek him in the wrong place. But once again, that is not Job's problem. Job searches desperately for some avenue to God. He even says that he would be willing to enter a courtroom with the Lord and lay his case before him. Then, Job asserts, God would listen (vv. 4--6).
And yet, and yet, Job knows the foolishness of that, because he knows who God is, and he realizes that he could not possibly contend with the Lord. God is too awesome, too overwhelming in his glory, too dreadful in his might for anyone to stand up before him (vv. 15--16). Job is not fooling with the sentimental little godlets that we sometimes imagine for ourselves. Job knows the character of God, because he has lived in God's presence all his life. But maybe that is our problem, that we think God is silent because we are seeking the wrong kind of God.
But the problem is still there, isn't it? We cannot find God. I once had a professor in seminary who said, "We should stop talking about 'seeking God.' God isn't lost. We are lost." And the message of our text and of the scriptures in their entirety is that all of us lost ones have been found. We cannot seek God, but God has sought us and found us. He finds Job, at the end of our story, and comes to him and speaks to him. And he found us in our Lord Jesus Christ, who came in our flesh, and shared our suffering, and heard our pleas, and promised that he would never leave us. Yes, thick darkness may surround us at times. Yes, it may seem as if no prayer is heard, and no divine presence is with us. Yes, we may suffer pain and "outrageous fortune" in this sin--pocked world of ours. But Christ made a promise to us, and he will always keep it. "Lo, I am with you always," he said, "to the close of the age" (Matthew 28:20). Trust that promise. Cling to it. Even when you can't experience it. For it is now and will always be true.
Lutheran Option: Amos 5:6--7, 10--15
These verses actually form a portion of a funeral lament that God utters over his people in northern Israel in the eighth century B.C., through the words of his prophet Amos. The lament begins in verse 1 and ends with the mourning wailing described in verses 16--17. God has determined that he will make an end of his people in the northern kingdom of Israel (8:2; cf. 3:15; 8:10), an end that will come in their fall to the armies of the Assyrian Empire, in their exile, and in their disappearance from history. Our passage details some of the reasons why that end has been determined.
The theme of the whole is set forth in verse 7: Israel turns justice to wormwood (a bitter wood used for medicine), and casts down righteousness to the earth. The reference is to Israel's treatment of its poor peasant farmers in the courts of law which were held in each city at the gates. City elders made up the personnel of the courts. We read in verse 11 that fines were exacted from the poor in the form of some of their grain. The elders then sold the grain and used the proceeds to build fine stone houses, unlike the clay houses of the poor. Or they bought the best vineyards in the best fields. In verse 12, we also learn that the elders accepted bribes to influence their judgments. Moreover, when more honest elders objected and attempted to render just judgments, they were scorned and drowned into silence by the avaricious others (vv. 10, 13). That could remind us of the fate of those who refuse to toe a "politically correct" line in our own society. Sometimes truth falls victim to distorted public opinion, as it also did in the court of Pontius Pilate on a spring day in Jerusalem.
In the midst of a corrupt society, Amos admonishes his people to "seek the Lord," and to "seek good" (vv. 6, 14), which is a repetition of the same thought, because that which is good, according to the Bible, is not some virtue or ideal lying outside of God, but God himself. "No one is good but God alone," our Lord said (Mark 10:18). If we would know what is good, therefore, we must know it in the presence of God, from his commandments and teachings, his actions and words.
Amos tells his sinful people that if they mend their ways, and turn and seek the Lord, then "it may be" that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to a remnant of them in his judgment on them (v. 15). But God is not coerced, even by our turning, and the grace of God is never earned, but only freely given. In Israel's case, in the days of Amos, she passed up too many opportunities. God is the one source of her life (v. 6), but she has chosen death. The God who is life, is also a consuming fire (v. 6), and Israel will be consumed. The funeral lament is promised at the end of the chapter (vv. 16--17). In similar manner, our Lord Jesus tells us that "whoever denies me before others, I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 10:33). Let those who have ears to hear, hear.
