40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Job 9:25-10:22 (Episode 396)

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Job mourns the lack of an arbiter between God and himself. Has God tricked him or set him up for all of this? Does God give good things just so he can take them away? Job wants to go into darkness, but he cannot do it with God so near. Have a listen. Show Notes: Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: Freedom Lessons Album Free 2023 Advent Resources Your God is too Glorious, 2nd Edition 2024 NWA Tickets (May 3-4) Join the 1517 Academy More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. and while you're over there, make sure you check out all the other things that 1517 is doing. I mean, have you guys taken any academy courses yet? There's a new academy course. Chad, I don't know if you've seen the trailer for this, and it might not be public, but I've seen it.

And by the time this releases, it may very well be public. But there's a new academy course that's being released on the Church Fathers with Bruce Hillman. Nice. man the trailer is something to behold i'll tell you what um keep keep your eye out for it if it's not out yet it will be out very soon i'll tell you what i'm like i'm taking that course for sure it's been it's been a little bit since i delved into the church fathers so i would like a new refresher man it looks it looks really really good and of course you know like so many things at 1517 virtually everything on 1517 it's free so all you gotta do is sign up and then you can uh

You could be smarter than all those other Christian friends around you. You'd be like, yeah, but have you thought about patristics lately? Have you thought about that? Let me talk to you about some of the old church controversies. Let me talk to you about the characters. Let me tell you what they fought about. It's going to be good, and Bruce Hillman, he's a smart guy. That's his field of expertise, so he's going to be a great guide through that.

So if not that, you can sign up for Chad's course in the Old Testament. There's a ton of academies. Go check some of those out or anything else that we're doing over at 1517. Chad, we are in Job chapter 9. Job is given his response. He's talking about how, in his mind, he has ceased to maybe— he's sort of giving up on this idea that he is going to win an argument with God. He has now said that, look, man, if I could give an answer to a thousand questions,

I'm probably going to get all these wrong. I don't even know how to argue with God. He's the guy that's making the sun shine, and he's making the rain come. He's doing all these things. I don't know how to argue with this guy. But I'll tell you one thing, and we kind of ended with this shocking thing that he says, because his friend had said, look, man, God's not going to judge the blameless. Job says, I think he is going to do that, actually, and says,

when disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent. he says the earth is given into the hand of the wicked he covers the face of his judges if it is not he then who is it and and the big the big statement is i say this buddy i say that he destroys both the blameless and the wicked yeah that's the uh that's based upon everything job has experienced that is his conclusion yes that's uh i mean that's there's no there it's inescapable with regard to what he sees and what he has what he's gone through that if it's not god doing this then who would it be so it's a rhetorical question of course it's god who does all this job says he destroys the righteous along with the wicked now verse 25 he's going to shift gears and he's going

to uh talk about the the brevity of of human life through several images and then he's going to move from there to basically lament that no matter what he does, whether it's good or bad, things always seem to turn out the same way. So he starts with three different images for how fast life goes by. He says, my days are swifter than a runner. They flee away. They see no good. They go by like skiffs of reed and then the third one is like an eagle swooping on its prey so uh swifter than a runner i mean that's fairly common biblical image the skiffs of reed one commentator called this an egyptian speed boat so these are these are these are lightweight boats are made of papyrus uh so they go they're not heavy they don't weight it down so they go go pretty quickly and then the

eagle swooping on its prey. I mean, I think we've probably all seen, maybe not an eagle, but a hawk that just drops out of the sky and comes up with something in its talons. And that's what he says his life is like. Now, this might seem a bit contradictory because Job has also said that his days seem to drag by. In fact, he wishes that they would go faster so that he would just be done with it and be in the grave already. But I mean, this is the way it is when you're suffering you don't necessarily have to you don't are incapable of maintaining any kind of logical consistency yeah you know sometimes it seems like time drags by sometimes it seems like it it goes in a in a hurry but anyway uh he moves then verse 27 to say if i say i will forget my

complaint i will put off my sad face and be of good cheer so if you know so i'm just gonna i'm going to pretend like everything's okay. I'm going to take off my sad face. I'm going to be happy. I'm going to smile. Then he says, if I try that, it doesn't work because I become afraid of all my sufferings. So the fear is not going to leave. He can pretend to be okay. He can put a smile on his face, but it won't do any good because fear is always there. Fear of the sufferings that he has endured, that he is going to endure, and that he still is going to endure. Because he ends up by saying, because I know that you will not hold me innocent. I shall be condemned. Why then do I labor in vain? So this is more of his, it's like he's looked at all his options and everywhere he

looks, every door closes in his face. There's nothing he is able to do, whether it's faking it, whether it's trying to cry to heaven, whatever it might be, nothing is moving him any closer to figuring out where he stands with God, which is, of course, the looming question behind all of this. Where is God, and why has he turned either his back against me or begun to attack me? Yeah, I mean, Job is in a situation where even doing something like putting away his complaint and say, all right, I'm going to be of good cheer, which, by the way, seems like a total impossibility.

I mean, you're covered in boils sitting on a track. I mean, there's no way to probably... Good luck with that. There's probably no... You would have to fake this. I mean, there's no way to do this genuinely. But he's saying, like, all of that, that would be a labor.

I mean, that would take some doing. Why go through all that? Why, like, play that game when the outcome's the same? I mean, like, I'm still going to be condemned. At least that's how it is in his mind. like there's there's no point in me acting like anything is different than it is because it won't change the outcome at all yeah it's kind of a damned if you do damned if you don't kind of

kind of situation no matter no matter what he tries i think he goes on to use some uh some pretty memorable images so if i if i wash myself with snow and cleanse my hands with lye so if i if i go to these extremes you know i find some snow i'm gonna just bathe in snow white white snow will will clearly make me clean let me get some lye in fact wash my hands and lie if i if i make myself you know as clean as humanly possible then he goes on in verse 31 yet you will plunge me into a pit which should probably turn probably be translated like a a slime pit so i'm gonna clean myself up i'm gonna take a bath in snow i'm gonna bathe in lime make myself really clean well if i do that it's not gonna do me any good because you're gonna you're gonna throw me into

a cesspool basically and even my clothes my own clothes will abhor me i'm gonna i'm gonna stink so bad so nothing i try is going to is going to help then in verse 32 he says for he talking about god here he is not a man as i am that i might answer him that we should come to trial together there is no arbiter i like the uh i like the translation of umpire better here there's no umpire between us who might lay his hand on both of us let him take his rod away from me and let not dread of him terrify me then i would speak without fear of him for i am not so in in myself so it's part of his frustration is that you know if if you and i dan if we had an issue um and it's supposed that you know it was serious enough to where we couldn't even talk to each

other on friendly terms but we had a common friend like common friend could like step between us and he could even like put his hand on your shoulder put his hand on my shoulder and say listen guys uh let's talk through this you know okay if we had somebody like that an arbiter a go-between an umpire well then he could he could at least kind of work with work with us because both of us are men and both of us are mortal and you know someone who's thinking rationally and is more of an objective party like an umpire supposed to be then they would be able to help us to solve whatever dispute we have but job says i i can't do that because i'm i'm a man and he's God. So there's no way that he is going to answer me, that we can go to trial together,

there can be some kind of umpire between us. There's no way in which we can resolve our conflict because of the gross disparity between the two of us. And so I just wish that he would take his rod, quit hitting me with his rod so that I wouldn't be living in terror all the time. But I love how he ends. He said, then I would speak without fear of him. But, of course, he does go on to speak. That last verse seems to say, you know what? I'm going to keep on speaking no matter what.

It's the only thing I can do is talk to God. So that is what I will continue to do, even though much of my words seem to be spoken in vain. Yeah, and he's saying, I mean, I would speak without fear. that would imply that right now you're still you are going to speak but you're going to do so in fear right so you're going to do so in fear yeah you don't have this umpire

what he's looking for is somebody say like well alright if I had someone that could call balls and strikes here we might be able to hash this out but the problem is that I'm going to say hey that's a that's a strike and then God's going to say nope no it's not

and then and I'm just going to be left to say, oh, okay, because he's God. So there's nobody that can—no one can be placed in a position of authority in this complaint, because my complaint is with the highest authority. This is a real problem for me. Yeah, yeah. He loses. He loses every game. There is no winning game for Job in this controversy. So there's a chapter break here.

That was the end of chapter 9, beginning of chapter 10. But, I mean, there's really no break in the speech itself. It's just a handy, handy break here because Job is going to continue. And it starts out with, I loathe my life, which is very much like Job chapter 3. In fact, there's going to be several Job chapter 3 kind of utterances in Job chapter 10. I loathe my life. I will give free utterance to my complaint. i will speak in the bitterness of my soul so that's uh riffing off of that closing verse of

chapter nine he's speaking yeah he's he's speaking fearfully but he's still going to speak he's going to have free utterance to his complaint and he's going to speak in the bitterness of uh of his soul and here's what he goes on to say i will say to god do not condemn me let me know why you contend against me? Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands, and favor the designs of the wicked? Have you eyes of flesh? Do you see as man sees? Are your days as the days of man, or your years as a man's years, that you seek out my iniquity and search for my sin? Although you know I am not guilty, and there is none to deliver you out of my hand. So he's going to say to God all these words, but in the end it doesn't seem to do any good,

because even though he can say these words to God, in the end he knows that God knows that he's not guilty. But still, there's none who's going to be able to deliver him out of God's hand. Yeah, this situation is like, yeah, you've got to be frustrated if you're Job, because he's sitting there like, I am not guilty of anything. But God, I feel like God is treating me as though I'm the most guilty person that's ever lived. But I also know that he knows that's not true. So, I mean, this is the vexation, right? Where you're like, what is going on here?

I can't attribute this to anyone but God. But also, I know that God must know that I'm not at fault here. otherwise he wouldn't be god yeah yeah i mean it was it's it's the classic dilemma it's a classic living trying to figure out the contradiction the seeming contradiction between okay god is good god is all-knowing uh and then at the same time if god is all good and all-knowing then you know why is uh why is there not only so much evil and suffering in the world but so much uh suffering in my own life you know if god loves me then why is everything that i'm experiencing so hateful and so painful it's the it's a contradiction that we all struggle with when we're when we're

in the midst of trials and tribulations but especially job because job was the as we've said multiple times the moral cream of the crop so if all these things are happening to him and he's done nothing to deserve them and if god is good and if god is all-knowing and god knows that he doesn't deserve this then why in the world is all of us following him yeah i mean you can think about this as like a parent right so if uh say your kid gets really sick right so like every parent has it has had that's happened where you're you know i've got a little baby and she had uh she got some kind of bacterial infection thing a while back and she was all miserable and coughing And all this stuff.

Now, because I love her, you think, if I could stop this, I totally would. It wouldn't even be a decision for me, right? Like, hey, you have the power to take this away. Instantly, yes. Would you like to do it? You're like, absolutely, I would like to do it. She's just miserable and suffering here, so no question about it, I'll take this away. and then you think about god and you're like okay so i'm god's child and he says he loves me and

then here i am suffering like crazy and i have to believe that he does have the power and yet nothing's happening and this this creates a real dilemma in us because you're like surely god's better than me and the answer to that of course is he is better than you but you're like but that's not what i would do yeah yeah i mean that that is the ongoing that's the ongoing issue with any kind of any kind of suffering because when we see it we immediately want to end it i mean what yeah i mean if we're especially if it's somebody that we care about i mean if it's it's a child if it's a spouse anybody that we that we care about and we see them suffering we immediately want that to end and we you know judge i think rightly that that would be

the good thing to do but we don't see god acting that way and so we translate we compare what we would do with what we see god doing or what we think we see god doing and yeah at times we end up kind of like job like what what's going on why why is this why is this continuing why why don't you stop the suffering uh and i mean that is the that is the human dilemma that this people struggle with throughout uh throughout the generations that's the main theme of job and that's you know At some points in our lives, that's our struggle, our struggle as well. And this is the answer to this question, while not maybe that comforting, is that we would do all those things in the moment because the moment is what we have,

and the moment is as far as we can see. And so God is not like that. God sees well past this moment and the next moment and a million moments after that. And so, well, if I had all that power, my daughter would never be sick, and she'd also never have an immune system, you know, so that she would never be built up in any way. Her body would never learn any of these things. and that that might be a a trite example but what it means is that god knows like what it is that he is doing in the midst of suffering whereas we would just respond to the moment to the suffering itself uh have no regard for what may be happening and and what can come out of it later and so this

is why Paul will say that God works all things together for good. And as I've said numerous times on the podcast, of course, Paul is necessarily talking about bad things, because I can work good things together for good. It takes not very much effort or power to make good things good. They're just sort of already good. And so, yeah, Paul is talking about bad things, suffering, persecution, all of that kind of stuff. And God is able to work those things for good. Now, that does take someone bigger and more powerful than ourselves. It also takes somebody who can see the end from the beginning.

Yeah. I mean, that's what I tell myself a lot of times when I think about my own sufferings or the sufferings of those close to me is that, yeah, we have a very limited perspective. and uh what we see is today and you know maybe we look a little bit into the future but we can't see all things at all times and we certainly can't see the good that's going to come out of the sufferings that we that we endure but god can and so he he uses that in order to empty us of ourselves and to draw us closer to to himself and and along the way i mean we trust that he's doing what is best at the same time we can also cry out these kinds of words from job it's not as if we

just have to simply remain silent and say okay well you're god and i'm not i guess everything's going to be all right in the end because we still continue to struggle and so we still continue to to pray and to lament do all the things that the job does so it's not either or in other words we can know that yes god is going to use our sufferings in some way for for good and at the same time cry out in those sufferings why and how long and what the world's going on yeah i mean i think that if we had our way we would we were we'd be asking god to give us the kind of life that we would never need him for anything can you just make it to where i have zero dependency on you that i can you make can you give me a sort of life where i never have to really trust you

really uh can you give me a life that doesn't require any faith and the answer to all those things is no god won't give you that no and he won't give you that and the reason he won't this is not good for you yeah because he loves us yeah yeah yeah it would be uh i mean it would be unloving of god uh to construct our lives in such a way that everything went well for us because if everything went well for us then in the end we would be very unwell because we would just walk like like what you were describing we've become we would become independent or think we were independent anyway and with that would come pride and with pride would come all the other things that always accompany accompany the biggest thing that you become and so the biggest thing you

become is faithless which is the worst thing to become yes yes absolutely so uh back back to job um we're at verse eight uh he's going to uh use some very creative language here i mean some of it's found in other parts of the scriptures but uh what job uses here to describe how god makes us some of this is uh is uniquely job's job's contribution especially the part about curdling like cheese nowhere nowhere else found in the in the bible but so this is uh i'll read 8 through 13, because this is all about God's creation of us. And we'll get to Job's point kind of at the end. Your hands fashioned and made me, and now you have destroyed me altogether. Remember that you have made me like clay, and will you return me to the dust?

Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews. You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit. Yet, these things you hid in your heart, I know that this was your purpose. Now, the overall message of this seems to be, listen, God, so you spent a lot of time and effort

and in carefully creating who I am. your hands fashioned me you made me you know you took you took clay uh and and you formed me or you you you poured me like milk that then curdled into cheese you you knit me with bones and sinews you you were engaged in artistry in other words in making me now you're destroying me and that makes no sense i mean it'd be like uh you know make michelangelo finishes uh painting the uh the Sistine Chapel, and then he sets it on fire. Yeah. There's this, there's this irrationality that Job is, is focusing here on. So if you're a good and a gracious and a careful and a seemingly loving creator, because you granted me life and steadfast love, then why are you destroying

your creation? Why after making me from clay, are you returning me to dust? You know, Why, after clothing me with skin and flesh, are you now ripping it off of me so that I'm going through the pain and the suffering that I'm during? Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. I mean, it makes no sense. Why would you invest anything into me if all you were going to do is destroy it? Why waste your time? Yeah.

Yeah. i mean there's there's echoes of all this uh this kind of language in other parts of the scripture i mean isaiah 64 says uh we are the clay and you are the potter we're all the work of your hands and psalm 119 has the same language like your hands made me and fashioned me but then it goes on to say give me understanding that i may learn your commandments so the same kind of creation language is echoed elsewhere but what job does with is unique because most of the time when you hear about god creating us it's uh it's in a psalm of praise or something like that but job turns everything around he says okay well if this is if a is true then why is b happening if you've created

me why are you uncreating me if you so so carefully painted this portrait why now are you ripping it to ripping it to shreds it doesn't it doesn't make any sense to job that anyway that's the overall it's like he's uh he's taking genesis 2 and then he's saying okay you did all this wonderful work in genesis 2 now why are you undoing it in my in my own life yeah i mean to job it feels like uh you love me and but yet you love me and so why are you treating me like you hate me right yes yeah yeah i mean it's it's uh it's somewhat akin to psalm 22 verse 1 right my god my god why have you forsaken me yeah you're you are my father so why am i why am i uh going through what i'm going through yeah it's and i love the fact that verse 12 says you have granted me life

instead fast love your care his prayers are my spirit so this is this is job really focusing not just on god's he's not just god isn't just job's maker many it didn't make him just to have something to make or to display his power he did it because he wanted job to live he did it because he loves job in fact his care preserved him all of these years so job has experienced the manifold love of God and His care in his life. He's experienced that over and over and over. So now he's living with the struggle of this contradiction from his past to his present.

Yeah, and there's a real sort of accusation there in verse 13, following up on it. So, like, hey, you gave me, granted me, gifted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit. yet these things you hid in your heart I know that this was your purpose like it was like

to hide the reason for these things was like what you had planned all along yeah I think he really he feels I don't know maybe this isn't right but it's like he feels deceived by God and that's

kind of the I mean I have felt that way maybe I'm reading my own yeah he's set up yeah i mean maybe i'm reading my own experience into this but you know you it's one of these where you you you're thinking oh man god is blessing me and then all of a sudden it's ripped away it's like was he oh or was he was was he leading me on this entire time in order that he could just rip it away at the at the last minute it's easy it's easy to read your own experiences into job yes i i felt like i i don't want to do

that uh but uh but at the same time yeah it's uh with a book like this it's hard it's hard not to dude i got this uh this is a very trite example but it pops into my head because it just happened to me i was on thanksgiving and my niece came up to me now i'm a fan of uh i don't like candy that much but i do like sour apple candy she came up to me with this uh with this candy cane it's all green and she said i got you the best sour apple candy cane that there is i was like sweet and i took it and put it in my mouth and it was a sour cream and onion candy cane and i knew at that moment that that was her purpose all along oh that's great joe has the most extreme version of this happening yeah this is another tried example of my kids would often do the same thing

if we went out to eat they would if i had to leave the table for a minute they would switch my dr pepper for root beer which i despise i root beer is the most disgusting drink ever and so all i would have to do is take one sip and knew that i had been tricked by by my children they're just supposed to love and care for me yeah how can you yeah you take this and not like that something like a good old sarsaparilla man oh man i i have tried i've tried i thought as a child i thought when i grew up maybe i'd outgrown my disgust for root beer but i've tried it and no i've not it is it is uh it is a uh antipathy toward root beer that i will have my entire life this is sorry this is this is information that i didn't know but will store away i will i will i will pick up

a mantle uh next time you get up to leave the table for me oh so uh yeah you take our examples there uh and uh you you amplify them well that's i mean we've experienced things like this uh i have uh and probably a lot of our a lot of folks listening have too where you you kind of feel tricked yeah you gave me all these things just yeah it's it's god you gave me all these things like i do like and he's acknowledging i didn't earn them like or i think you granted all my all the things i have in life the life itself you you granted these things to me but it seems to me that you did that just so that you would have something to take away yeah so that's the end of that section now now verse 14 and following he's going to uh kind of go into one of these other uh rants

or laments where it's like it doesn't matter which way he goes either way it's going to be wrong he says if i sin you watch me and do not acquit me of my iniquity if i'm guilty woe to me but if i'm in the right i can't lift up my head because i'm filled with disgrace and look on my affliction and were my head lifted up you would hunt me like a lion and again work wonders against me you renew your witnesses against me and increase your vexation toward me and you bring fresh troops against me so i've had some disputes over the translation of that last line of verse 17 but uh the esv has you bring fresh troops against me which is a remarkable image it's like god isn't isn't isn't just god that's attacking me it's like he's recruited a whole army and as

soon as uh one group of troops wear out he's like ah we got some fresh we got some fresh ones here they'll uh they'll start the onslaught once once more yeah it's like if you were uh being flogged and uh all day and this guy was flogging you just wore himself out and so he had to he had to be done his arm was given out and you think man thank god thank god thank god that's over and then like He just tag-teams another guy, a brand-new guy in there. He's got a fresh arm. Yeah, that is a vivid picture. That is a bummer.

There is no relief. Anytime whatever is oppressing me wears itself out, he just swaps in for someone that's just woke up from a nice long sleep and is ready to go. Yeah, yeah. just down to red bull and he's uh full of energy so but he starts out there with uh you know talking about okay if i sin all right so if i do wrong you're gonna watch me you're gonna see it it's not gonna i'm not i can't do this without you knowing and uh so you you're not going to equip

me in my iniquity so if i sin well that that's not gonna work out if i'm guilty woe to me he says but then he goes on to say well if i'm in but if i'm on the right well that doesn't do me any good either because i can't even i'm hanging my head low i can't even lift my head i'm filled with disgrace so uh either way i go whether i'm a sinner whether i i'm not whether i rebel whether i don't either way it's it's a it's a losing game for me in fact if i were to lift up my head then uh you'd like you know get your chariot get your get your bow and then you'd hunt me down like like a lion and work your wonders against me so uh and i think that transition and that's verses 14 to 17 i think that transition kind of puts joe now into uh a very even even darker mood

and he kind of regresses back to where he started in chapter three in these next few verses because this is when it begins to basically say he wishes he were dead. So verse 18. Why did you bring me out of the womb? Would that I had died before any eye had seen me, and were as though I had not been carried from the womb to the grave. Are not my days few? Then cease and leave me alone,

that i may find a little cheer before i go and i shall not return to the land of darkness and deep shadow the land of gloom like thick darkness like deep shadow without any order where light is as thick darkness i think joe pulled out as the i can't even say it thesaurus uh for this last this last couple verses he like looked up darkness he's like okay what are some other words for darkness because you got like four or five hebrew words there that all all all refer to darkness well i mean it seems as though joe's first utterance is that uh i wish i had never been born or i wish i could die and then you know he gets a little back and forth with two of his friends and in this in this last response here he seems that he's saying okay let me explain to you how

all of this feels uh what it what it all what how how this is from my vantage point and then i will return and explain to you again why it is that it seems as though it would have been better for me to have never been born like why why would you bring me out of the womb if the whole plan here was to have me be born give me a bunch of stuff so that you could take that stuff away and then I could just suffer. It would have been better if none of this would have ever happened. So no eye sees me. I'm never born. That would be better since that's off the table now. How about you just leave me alone? That I might find a little cheer. The cheer here, I suppose, would just be to not have God around in his mind, afflicting him, and then he can just die. The cheer is

knowing that god has left me so now i can die yeah i mean he seems to be at this point thinking that it's not like god has moved away from him and it's like god is too close yeah and the god who's too close is not the good and the gracious creator god but the the god who musters the troops uh in various waves to to attack him so you know since like you said since since i didn't die in the womb since i wasn't carried from the womb to the grave uh but now i'm living and experiencing all of this pain then at the very least just kind of step away give me some space because better is better is my life where you're not in it where you're not afflicting me uh in order that i can just simply go maybe smile a little bit have a little cheer before i go into the land of

I think it's interesting, and maybe there's nothing here, but as he looks up all his words for darkness, there is something interesting that he knows that as long as God is near him, he cannot embrace the darkness, right? So God has to leave before I can go into a place of deep darkness and deep shadows. Obviously, I can't do that with God around, because that's not where you end up with God. And so I need God to abandon me fully, not to just be against me, but I need him to abandon me completely, so that then I can go to a place where there is no light. the light is not there, it's just thick darkness and shadow, but that is impossible to do if God is right next to you. It's like, I think it's Psalm 139, even the darkness is not dark to you, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are the same to God, so the only way

you're going to get away from God in the darkness is for, the only way you're going to be in the darkness is for god to disappear and that which is of course what what job wants to happen uh but that's not going to happen uh because that's not that's not who god is now of course we know the story uh of course from the opening chapters of job job doesn't know exactly why all this is happening to him but uh but we do and uh we know and i suspect that uh despite his protest despite his laments that job knows in some way uh that uh god will not do what he says he's not gonna leave yeah because he's the kind of god who i mean like job said earlier who uh created him to give him a life and he's the god of steadfast love he's a god who has shown job many blessings over the years

and so he's not going to abandon job just like he's not going to abandon us uh no matter the psalms say the same thing you know go away from me leave me alone that i may smile again before i departed and no more and every time we pray that god says nope yeah won't do it i mean there's nothing wrong with praying it i mean i i pray that in the psalms but but god says no i i will not abandon you in the darkness and i'm gonna stay right here and you can keep hurling your words toward me and i will take them i will listen and i will be with you in the midst of your grief and your pain and your confusion and all of that because I'm the God who actually is the God of life and steadfast love. And I won't abandon you. In fact, I'll carry you through this

until finally you get to the end of your own book of Job and are able to look back and realize that I was right there with you through it all. Yeah. Amen. Well, all right. Well, that's it. That's joe's response next uh episode we'll get into the third friend and uh man he's he's a he's great uh i think that you guys are gonna so far yeah he's he's just he's yeah he's me just full of compassion yeah you're gonna you're gonna really like this you you need more friends like this in your life for sure uh we'll get into that next episode chad i'll see you then all right see you We'll see you next time.