Exploring My Strange Bible - A God of Love, a World of Suffering

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

During his earthly ministry, Jesus interacts with multitudes of hurting people. So how does he process, understand, and respond to all the suffering and evil he encounters? Tim explores the book of Job as the biblical framework for understanding pain, evil, and suffering in a world created by a God of love. Tim gave this message at Bridgetown Church in Portland, Ore., on April 6, 2022. REFERENCED RESOURCES Tim references the 2015 BibleProject overview video on the book of Job. Check out Tim’s extensive collection of recommended books here. SHOW MUSIC “Nob Hill (Instrumental)” by Drexler SHOW CREDITS Production of today's episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Aaron Olsen edited and remastered today's episode. JB Witty does our show notes.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everybody, I'm Tim Mackey, and this is my podcast, exploring my strange Bible. I am a card-carrying Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 20 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission of Jesus and the journey of faith. And I hope this can all be helpful for you too.

I also help start this thing called The Bible Project. We make animated videos and podcasts and classes about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology. You can find all those resources at Bibleproject.com. With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this week. The title for this evening was Tyler's idea, A God of Love and a World of Suffering. And, you know, a person could look at that title and walk away thinking,

okay, this is going to be like an evening where there's going to be a talk, and the talk is going to be about these huge themes of God's love and God's justice and the problem of evil and human suffering. And the Book of Job is going to answer all those questions for us. And, you know, as kind of way as I can, I'll just say, well, kind of. kind of. And even it's funny to watch that video,

which was, you know, researched and written by my past self, because the nature of Scripture is it's a kind of literature that doesn't give up all of its secrets on the first reading, on the fifth or the five hundredth, or the five thousandth. And I'm sorry if that's discouraging for you.

it's become really exciting to me. But what I want to share tonight is actually, let's just kind of take that for what it is, but there's a few points at which I would encourage my past self to frame things a bit differently if I were to write that video today. And so what I'm sharing tonight is kind of based on the themes that are covered there,

but they're also based on a lot of new reflection that I've had in the six years since. So maybe just quick to set expectations. Here's how I understand an evening like this. One of the ways that we talk about what we're doing as a community is that we are a group of followers of Jesus, and we are learning to be with Jesus so that we can become like Jesus

so that we can do what Jesus did. And if you come to this church community for any amount of time, you're going to hear that repeated by this crew, more times, then you might want to hear it, but it sticks. In my mind, an evening like this fits into that middle part, becoming more like Jesus, which means a lot of different things. But one of the things that it means is learning how Jesus saw the world,

and not just how he saw the world, how he saw, processed, and made sense of his world and how he responded to it, and specifically how he understood, suffering and the evil that he encountered. And how did he respond to it? And if my goal is to be an apprentice to Jesus of Nazareth, then it seems like that's the thing I would want to know.

Like, how did Jesus process all of the suffering hurting people that he encountered? I actually think on average he encountered a lot more in the course of his days than I do in mind. What story gave Jesus the framework for who he, was and what he said and what he did with all of these hurting people. And what's interesting is that when many of us think about the story of Job, and I raised it, my six years ago past self raised it to, is there's that point in the story right near the beginning where God does something that makes us all really uncomfortable, which is he allows his chosen, favored one to undergo deep suffering. And my experience,

and every person I know who has come to that part of the book of Job, we immediately were deep disorientation and we feel frustrated with God. Anybody. Why would God do that? Like, he's an innocent guy. Like, why would God do that?

And so we walk away from that story feeling suspicious of God's character. And the longer I've sat with that, for me, that moment, right, that encounter that we have, with the story of Job, for me, it's all right there. The reckoning that we have to do with the book of Job and with Jesus is all, I think, wrapped up in how we approach that question.

So that's what I want to move towards tonight, because one thing is very clear when Jesus encountered suffering people and his own suffering, the one thing that he never did was get angry at God or suspect God's character. Jesus was angry at somebody else for all the suffering that he saw around him, but it was not his father. And what I want to understand

is what story is Jesus see himself living within that he can come to a place like that? And I have a deep hunch that the book of Job has a key to help us solve that puzzle. At least it has for me. And so that's how I want to frame this tonight, is I want to see human suffering the way Jesus thought so that I can begin to respond to it in a way that imitates more faithfully the response of Jesus to the people in his world.

And I think the book of Job is an amazing tool to help us on that journey. So that is our mission as I understand it tonight. You guys with me? Sweet. One more thing about Jesus. Actually a lot more things about Jesus. but I was watching the moment. Jesus in a really important Bible study

that he had with his closest followers after his resurrection, it's recounted in the gospel according to Luke, chapter 24, it's a well-known story. And he summarizes in a sentence. What he believed, the whole of Israel's scriptures were all about what Christians call the Old Testament, Jesus called by a number of different titles,

And they played a crucial role in Jesus' upbringing. He was raised on the stories and the poems of Scripture. They had a deep, formative impact on his imagination and his sense of who he is. You can just, any time he talks, he's just oozing lines and imagery and vocabulary from his people's scriptures, that is, the Hebrew Bible. And in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 24, Jesus summarizes the entirety of the Hebrew Bible up into one sentence. It's really remarkable.

I don't know if you spent any time reflecting on it, but it's right here. Jesus said to his disciples, this, everything that just happened over a good Friday and Easter weekend, this is what I was telling you about while I was still with you. Everything that has written about me in the Torah of Moses, in the prophets, and in the Psalms had to be fulfilled. this Jesus is one of Jesus' shorthand descriptions

for what we call the Old Testament. Then he opened their minds so that they could understand the scriptures and he told them, this is what's written, and he's not quoting here, this is Jesus' summary. The Messiah will suffer

and rise from the dead on the third day and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. This is Jesus' summary of the message of the Old Testament. And the Old Testament includes the book of Job, doesn't it? This is Jesus' summary of the book of Job. Right.

Right. How many of you have tried to read the Old Testament before? Yeah, how'd that go for you? How is that going for you? Yeah, you know, you stick with the Psalms, right? Some of them, right? Some of them, right? But it's touch and go pretty much everywhere else, you know.

Really? Okay, that's interesting. You know, whenever I try to read the Old Testament, it's really actually hard for me, at least it was for a very long time, for me to see that this is what it's about. Like, really? And really, there's only two options. One option is that Jesus doesn't know what he's talking. talking about. And I suppose that's possible, but I think the odds are a lot higher that I just don't know how to read this literature. And that the questions that I bring to it are the questions

that may be my questions, but they are not the questions that are going to illuminate what these texts are all about, including the book of Job. So at the risk of insulting your intelligence, I'm going to make it even more simple. Here is G.S.'s summary, my clicker, click. There we Yeah, there we go. Three steps. It's like it's really simple. The Messiah. You guys with me?

There's Jesus of summary. The Messiah, which is one of many images in the Old Testament to describe a person whom God has selected and appointed for his purposes in the world, specifically to represent God to people and to represent people before God. The Messiah, God's chosen, faith. favorite one. You listen me? That's step one of Jesus's summary. The Messiah enters into suffering and to death. But then out of death and through the other side, that Messiah is vindicated from suffering and death into resurrection life and in what Jesus says, forgiveness and good news

announced to all of the nations. In Jesus's mind, it seems so simple. It's like, yeah, just read it. And like, that's what it's about. And for many of us, of course, that's not our experience. And this is not an idle question. This is a question that for me, as a new follower of Jesus in my early 20s, I really had a difficult time. I was so down for Jesus.

He is. He was and is so compelling and beautiful to me. And he really cared about the first three quarters of my Bible. It's called the Table of Contest, the Old Testament. But when I try and read this thing, it's like really, it's like talking snakes, and cosmic floods, lots of sex scandals and violence and ancient poetry. And it's like, what does it have to do with anything?

Anybody? Do you know what I'm talking about? So this, a normal person would be like, okay, well, I'll just like deal with the Psalms and read the stories about Jesus, and I'll call it good at that. I took the other course of becoming obsessed with it and went to school for much longer than any reasonable person should. and learning lots of ancient languages because for one reason or another,

the way I'm wired, this has become one of the driving questions of my whole life. What is Jesus talking about? I want to know what Jesus saw when he read the book of Job. I want to hear from Job what he heard from Job

because the book of Job is about a guy who suffers and somehow how that suffering is woven into the mysterious purpose of God. And I think that's a really important thing to know what Jesus thought about because it clearly informed like so much of what he did. I want to hear from Job, what Jesus heard from Job. And what Jesus says he heard from Job is this. Are you with me? So let's just, as a thought experiment, let's just think about the story of Job

from this summary right here. And you know, it's really fascinating is that it works really well. Like really, my clicker, this might be a problem. It's going to be a problem for me. next slide for the next one's, Corin. You know, it's interesting. Job fits the pattern like to a T. It begins with God's righteous, chosen, favored one, blessed,

right? Are you with me? I mean, remember, the book has a three-part structure. Prologue, dialogues, an epilogue. The prologue is all about highlighting Job's righteousness in his innocence before God.

And yet, this righteous one that God calls his servant is handed over to unjust suffering. Near death, huge outcry of protest and lament. And after all of that lament is complete, God vindicates his righteous servant, restores his life, and restores him to a place of blessing, and forgives his friends who, interestingly enough, are from all the surrounding nations. Anybody? Well, that's interesting. Well, that's interesting. I think there's something here. I remember distinctly, I was riding my bike near 26 and salmon. When this hit me one morning, I was going to work. And I was like, oh, oh, I think I need to rethink everything I ever knew about the book of Job. This is why, if I made the video today, it would be really different than the one that I made six years ago. Not that it's wrong, but it just, It wasn't right enough. So let's take this one step at a time through this kind of out, through this outline here.

So let's take the step one. Job is identified as God's righteous, blessed, and favored one. Two times in the prologue to Job, God is called by both the narrator, excuse me, Job is described by both the narrator and by God, as righteous, as blameless, as innocent, fearing God, turning away from evil. And notice God calls Job, my servant, my righteous, blameless servant. Now that right there should be a clue to us

that this is not a story about how God relates to average people in the world. As good of its day as I can have, and really my wife would be the one to tell the truth here, I'm pretty sure that this does not describe my actual. life. Are you with me? Like maybe some of the time. But the whole point, and God says there's no one like him on the planet. He's not a normal guy. This is not a story about why good, bad things happen to good people. There's something else going on here. So God responds to this righteous,

favored one by blessing him immensely, immensely. Camera shifts up to God's heavenly court. room and this mysterious figure called the satan comes to God and begins to spin a web of words that calls Job's character into question. And what I translated it as the opposer or the accuser, my six-year-old self, my past self from six years ago, translated that way. My favorite translation now is the hostile one. Asked me in five years, it might be different. but I like that one today. The hostile one answered the Lord and said, does Job fear God for no reason?

Haven't you put a protective hedge around him in his house? Haven't you blessed the work of his hands? His possessions have increased. Stretch out your hand and strike all that he has and he'll curse you to your face. And the Lord said to the hostile one, no way, you can't trick me. I love this guy.

I'm going to keep blessing him. The Lord said to the hostile one, hostile one, look, everything that he has is in your hand. Just don't kill him. So begin the rounds of disasters that happened to Job four times over. And when the hostile one returns, God's very proud of Job's response, which was to continue to bless the Lord. He takes and he gives. We come naked, we go back to death naked, blessed be the name of the Lord. And the Lord said to the hostile one, this is chapter 2

verse 3, have you considered my servant Job, there's nobody like him. Blameless, upright, fearing God, turning away from evil. He still holds his integrity even though you incited me against him to destroy him undeservately.

Most of our English translations right there read without reason. And that's not what God means. He doesn't mean without reason. What he means is without just reason. So I want you to, let's pay attention to this. The book is turning up the volume on the fact that Job's suffering is unjust.

The narrator says it. The logic of the story says it. God says it. Are you tracking with me? It's the focus of the story. And so this is the fork in the road, I think, for a lot of us, is how we respond to this tension in the book. And many of us, this is just one more part of the Bible that's weird,

and I'm down for the Jesus part, and I get the portrait of God that Jesus presents to me, and then I go to the rest of this book, and it's like really confusing, especially this moment right here. So if I'm going to follow Jesus, does that really mean I need to come to peace with the fact that God might ruin my life to settle a wager with like a rebellious angel?

Is that like, do you have to believe that? Are you with me? Is that what it means? To like read the Bible and believe what it says and that settles it? Like what's going on here? And the answer to that question, I think for each one of us is going to expose deep assumptions that we have about what the Bible is and what the Bible is for.

And the reality is that most of us, us have been shaped in corners of the Christian tradition where we've been trained from our earliest encounters with the Bible to view it as like a divine reference book. Dropped out of heaven either as like a behavior manual telling you the list of all the things you should or shouldn't do or like a theology dictionary where when you have your felt needs or questions, what you learn to do is like what page, what chapter, what verse of the Bible do I go to when I have a question about X, Y, or Z? And so if I have a question about the problem of evil

and how that resolves with God's love or justice, we'll go to the book of Job and you will get the answer because that's what the Bible's for, right? To give you answers to all of your questions. And then you read the book of Job and you're like, yeah, I'm not really satisfied with this answer. And it doesn't really seem to square with who Jesus is. What is going on here?

I'm just going to go do something else, which is what most of us do, except me, right? For better or worse. So I think what's happening here is something that happened with my sons. I remember when my sons are 8 and 10 now, back when my older son, Roman, was about 4, this is my first memory, of his first real encounter where he saw a hammer. And he really saw a hammer in my tool shed, and he got it out and started doing something with it. And what he started doing with it was digging a hole.

He saw the claw of the hammer, and what in his mind, what it made sense was it's like a pick, you know, like a pick. And so half of our, we have a very tiny backyard, and half of it is a beautiful little situation that my wife, Jessica, has come up with. And then the other half of it, we've handed over to destruction of our voice. and it's just dig pits and, you know, holes in the ground and that kind of thing. And a lot of those holes have been made with my hammer, right? And with the claw of my hammer. And so it just made sense to him like, it's the claw. And I was like, okay, that's what he wants to do with the hammer.

I tried to show him a shovel one time, and he was like, no, the hammer. And so I also remember many years later when I began to teach him like, here's like, turn it around, nails. wood. And he was like, whoa, I can nail things into wood. And he began to experience the hammer, though he still uses it as a digger too. But I'm convinced that the way the most of Christians relate to the Old Testament and to the Book of Job is a lot like that. We come with our preloaded assumptions about what it is, what it's for, what you're supposed to do with it, and we find ways to make it work.

But there's a double tragedy because we make it do things that maybe it wasn't actually designed to do all the while missing out on the immense potential of what it actually is designed to do, but we don't have a clue what that thing is because we're perfectly happy digging holes with our hammer. You guys with me. So what I want to know is like what is the book of Job actually trying to do. And what Jesus said it's about is something that I maybe or maybe you have never thought to think that the book of Job is about. And I've come to the place where I'm absolutely convinced that Jesus is right. I don't know what else the book of Job could be about, except what Jesus described in his summary.

And so with the short amount of time that's left, that's what I want to talk about. Guess with me? Okay. First, sorry, one more thing. Because what the book of Job about is what the book of Job is about, And what G.S. summary is about is what the entire Hebrew Bible is about. It's actually not about very many things. And so in this way, and this may be another helpful illustration if the hammer doesn't work for you,

the Hebrew Bible is a lot, a lot like Blue Note era American Jazz. Anybody? Next slide. Next slide. Yeah, there we go. Come on. Okay. So blue note label?

Anybody. Yeah, right. This is a jazz label. It started in the late 30s, but really came into its own in the late 50s or the 60s. And when very few African-American jazz composers get signed to large music labels, Blue Note just like created the most genius group of music composers, I think, my humble opinion, in American history, John Coltrane being one of them. And what is really one of the trademarks of this era of modern jazz music was that the first 30 seconds of any song was given over to giving you the melody, just the core melody. And sometimes it would be just 30 seconds, sometimes 20 seconds. And then the rest of the song would just be cycling through the core melody. But never identically and never the same. Every time you walk through the melody,

you explore it from another angle. You explore it with another instrument. And so this is one of John Coltrane's most famous albums in this famous song, Blue Train. Anybody? If you heard it, you would know. The melody is very simple. The melody is very simple.

Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. There it is. The song is 11 minutes long. It's 11 minutes long. And is that. But never like how I just sung it to you. Actually good. But you actually never fully hear the first statement

identically ever again. It's just recycled, recycled. this time with the piano, this time with the bass, this time with the major chords turn minor, this time in harmony, this time at double tempo. And what this form of music is, this is a way of exploring just a few notes in one melody, but exploring the infinite potential that's possible

when you look at those set of notes from all the possible angles. The Hebrew Bible is just like this. And the book of Job is like a jazz quartet that's 11 hours into the session. And by the time you get to Job, you've cycled through the melody hundreds of times. And so when the hostile one steps on to the scene like, you know this character, you've actually encountered this character dozens of times before. And you know what he's going to say and you know what he's all about. And when God introduces Job as his righteous, blameless servant, you're like, oh yeah, okay, I know exactly what's going to happen next.

In other words, the book of Job was never meant to stand alone. It's meant to be understood in the light of what the entirety of the Hebrew Bible is about. And you've already been prepared if you've been tracing the melody. So here is my best attempt to show you the melody, and then we'll come back to the book of Job. You guys with me? How are you guys doing? Okay, all right. Just like in jazz music,

the first stories of Genesis give you the melody. And the melody goes like this. In the beginning, God created the skies in the land. Didn't see that coming, did you? So God faces the pre-creation disorder and chaos. He sends his wind and breath over the waters,

and he splits them. so the dry land can emerge and God summons this garden of potential out of the land and then he summons these creatures up out of the dirt of the land and then among those creatures there's a particular one that's very special to God is infused with divine breath and appointed as God's image and representative and the whole setup is that through these human images of God heaven and earth are bridged and connected. It's like God representing his rule and presence and authority here on earth

through these portals of heaven and earth images of God. Sounds like a great setup. Except it all goes terribly wrong. Because the goodness of this whole setup of blessing in life is dependent on whether humans are going to represent God's rule in the world by trusting God's wisdom to discern between good and bad. Humans decide to define good and bad by their own wisdom, but not by themselves.

Not by themselves. There's this mysterious snake in the garden, and it starts spinning a web of deceit and trying to get the humans to believe that God is holding out on them, that God is actually not quite as generous as you might assume, and that the thing that God is asking you to trust him about, it will actually go much, much better if you just do that thing yourself.

And you can become your own God. It's what the snake says to the human images. And so, of course, you know the story through their own folly, and falling prey to deception, they're exiled from the garden into the land of dust and death. And so we enter into the death and suffering part of the story.

And what's really crucial in this way of retelling the story is that when God informs them of the consequences of their decision, it's God's lament. And when he tells the humans they're going to return to the dust from which they came, he's staying at the moment that they forfeited the gift that he wanted to gift them, which is union with his own eternal life. And so the humans are thrust out into the land of dust and death from which they came, and so began the cycles of violence.

It begins with the next generation. Their son defines good and bad in his own eyes, and he murders his brother. And so this brother's blood soaks the ground. And that blood cries out from the ground, we're told, and that cry rises up to God. And then that brother, the murderer, seven generations go down his line, and it leads to one of his descendants who becomes the founder of a city. And this is a city that glories in military prowess and violence. and even more blood begins to soak the ground

until the cry of innocent blood from the ground, the cry becomes so strong that God cannot take it anymore. And so what he decides, these humans are going to destroy themselves, so I'll just accelerate the process. In those dark, chaotic waters that God parted, he allows them to collapse back in and wash creation clean of the blood of the innocent.

But there is one, righteous, blameless servant of God. His name is Noah. It means rest. Noah, rest. Let's go back. Let's go back. Yep. Thanks, Corrin. So this guy, this guy's awesome. God says to this guy, things are going to go really terrible. The whole creation is about to collapse. And I'm going to ask you to do something that's really crazy to build this box. And this box is going to save your life. and the life of your family, because I've seen you as righteous in this generation. And so God delivers his righteous chosen one through the waters of death, and the boat lands on top of a mountain. And the first thing that Noah does when he gets off his box boat is to build an altar. And he offers a sacrifice, which in biblical imagery is a way of signaling your absolute surrender before God.

and God looks on the total surrender of his righteous, blameless, chosen one. And what is God's response? It's remarkable. It's in Genesis chapter 8. I don't know if you've read it recently. But what God says is, you know what I know about humans? They're no different. They're going to keep murdering and slaughtering each other.

But because of what Noah has done, I'm going to forgive. And the thing that I did to wash creation clean and to decreat, I'm not going to do that. again. Because of the righteous intercession of the suffering chosen one, God releases blessing and a new chance at creation again. Hooray, Noah saves the world. What can go wrong? Everything, actually, everything. Everything can and does go wrong because it's humans, humans that are involved. But there you see the melody? It's right there. This right there. Okay, one more cycle.

So that guy, Noah, the next thing he does after getting off his boat is plant a garden. Sweet, you know, taken after God, planting gardens. That's awesome. He plants a whole bunch of fruit vines in the garden. That's great. And he consumes the fruit of that garden and he becomes naked. And he goes into his tent and his son, something terribly shameful and sexually abusive happens with his son in the tent. His son does something to him or I think more likely to know his wife.

And that results in the birth of a child. And that child, in Canaan, gives birth to a whole lineage that goes multiple generations, leading to the birth of this violent warrior king named Nimrod. His name means rebel in Hebrew. And this guy loves to boast about his hunting accomplishments. He's an animal slayer. And he's the founder of your friendly empire and mine, Babylon, which is the archetypal evil empire in the biblical story.

And what Babylon goes on to do is to create this. monstrous city with a tower exalting the name and language and culture of Babylon, building it up to the skies, giving it the divine imprimatur that gives them, right, the legitimacy to conquer the world in the name of their God. Anybody know that story before? And so God sees this monstrosity of human arrogance, and so he decreates it. He scatters Babylon. And out of that scattering, however, he sees one guy, one guy named Avram or Abraham and his wife, Sarah. Avram means exalted father and Sarah means queen. So he calls exalted father and queen out of Babylon and they have to truck through this desolate wilderness to a land where they don't know where,

and the first thing they do when they obey God's command and they go to this land is they go up to some mountains and they build some altars and they begin to call on the name of Yahweh. And Yahweh seize the absolute surrender of his righteous chosen one, and what does he do? He says, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to put into motion a plan to restore my blessing to all of the nations. Anybody? This cycle two. Do you get it? Next slide. Just press repeat. Isaac and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers, Moses and the Israelites, the stories of Samuel or Ruth, David, Esther, and Daniel, they are all architected on the pattern of the melody. And it's really cool because the more times you cycle through the melody as you get further and

further into the Hebrew scriptures, the way that later stories will pick up the vocabulary and patterns of earlier ones, it's like the jazz quartet. And by the time you get to the Book of Job, you're just supposed to have it in your blood, right? And so truly the Book of Job is like a quartet of virtuoso players, and they're just work in the melody. And you're just supposed to track. But most of us don't know how to track, which is why most of us have a very frustrating time with the Book of Job.

So should we come back to the Book of Job? Did you know that this was actually going to be about the whole Hebrew Bible tonight? So let's just notice some things about the Book of Job. First of all, when Job is introduced to us, do you remember what God calls him? He calls him, my righteous, blameless servant. You want to know something that's really interesting. There's only three people who are called righteous and blameless in the whole story of the Hebrew Bible. Do you want to guess what their names are?

Next slide. Noah, Abraham, and... And Job. Job. Job's up top, Noah in the middle, Abraham at the bottom. And so that's a good example where just those few words at the beginning of the book of Job are the author's way of queuing you up, queuing up your expectations.

Dear reader, this is a new Noah. Dear reader, this is the new Abraham. Now here's the thing, is you're reading through the Hebrew Bible and you come to all these characters and like when Noah saves the world, right, or when Abraham saves the world, it's always followed by the next story

of them doing something really terrible to themselves or to other people, or they die. And so every time you go through the cycle of the melody, you get a shape of the solution of God's plan, of how he's going to respond to this huge mess that humans have created. And God's plan is to do this, is to raise up a righteous intercessor who will stare into the abyss of human suffering

and not run away, but head right into it, responding to God's call to charge into and involve themselves in the suffering and evil of the world, and hold their integrity. and trust and hope. And when God's righteous intercessor wades through suffering and death, emerging out the other side, God hears the cry of his righteous one

and releases blessing and forgiveness. That's the melody. And you watch all of these characters do it, and then you come to the book of Job, and you're like, well, what's this guy going to do? Let's find out. So what does Job do? Well, he holds in his integrity for like two chapters.

Okay, excuse me, he holds his temper for like two chapters, and the whole thing is about, is this guy going to hold his integrity or not? And so as all of the friends begin to accuse him, Job gets more and more impatient with them because he's just like, I don't know what to tell you guys, they didn't do anything to deserve this,

and they can't believe that it's possibly true. And so if you've ever read the book, you know, at some point, he just stops talking to them. He just ignores them, like they don't exist anymore. And Job's outcry, Job's, this long section of Job's yelling at God in the center of the book is the melodies, this cycle of the melody's version of the outcry of innocent blood rising up to God.

It's Job's lament, and when God's righteous, chosen, favored one cries out to him day and night from a place of full integrity and purity, God listens. And so what's really interesting is that Job's prayer and laments become more and more singular throughout the book until they become focused in on just one request. And it's in chapters 29 through 31 of Job. And Job's only desire is to see God. If I could just see him face to face, just have one moment of encounter where we could have a moment of communion together and I could lay my case before him. I know he would hear me. I have to believe he would hear me.

And that becomes Job's only request. And it's what he gets. And so when God shows up to Job, and God responds to him, and I actually still feel pretty good about the explanation I gave about that in the video, and that's a whole rabbit hole. But after God's response to Job,

Job just has one last thing to say. He surrenders. He just says, I'm sorry, I accused you of wrongdoing. My ears have heard of you, but now I see you. I recant, I repent in dust and ashes. And the moment that God's righteous servant humbles himself after going through horrendous suffering,

and this is really remarkable. The next thing in the story is this. And this was the other thing that hit me like a ton of bricks when I was riding my bike in the 20s of Southeast salmon to work one day where I was like, oh my gosh, no way. Look at what happens next in the story. Thinks next slide.

This is Job chapter 42. After the Lord said these things to Job, he, that is the Lord, said to Eliphouse, this is one of Job's friends, the Temanite. Dude, I'm so angry at you. You and your two friends, because you haven't spoken the truth about me. You wrapped me in your theological formulas.

You love to talk about me. You love to talk about me. But you haven't spoken the truth. about me like Job has. Job is the only character in the book who talks to God. Job is the one who actually utters what you would say could be the most possibly heretical statements about God in the book. And God's not like angry about that at all.

What he says is here's somebody who knows how to tell the truth. Are you with me? And Job's the only person in the book who poured all of his despair, all of his anger, all of his confusion before God, and talks to God and comes to a place of trust and surrender. And watch what happens the moment the Job reaches that place. Verse 8, so now, Elifaz, go take seven bowls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves.

You know, my servant Job is going to pray for you, and I will accept his prayer. I won't deal with you according to your folly, because you didn't tell the truth about me. You know Job has. So Elifahs the Temanite, billed at the shoe height and so far the Namathite. I don't know why it's funny to say their names. They did what the Lord told them,

and the Lord accepted Job's prayer, and then he's restored. Notice that Job is still suffering when he utters his prayer. When God's righteous servant is willing to surrender everything and go into suffering that, It is unjust and undeserved and cry out on behalf of the many before God. God hears the prayer of his righteous servant and forgiveness is released to the nations. Notice that all of the nations that his three friends are from are highlighted right at that moment in the story.

Are you guys with me? So the book of Job is not designed to answer our questions about the problem of evil. The book of Job is designed to do what the whole of the Hebrew Bible is designed to do, which is not to give us an answer, an intellectual answer that we can tuck in our pockets and walk away feeling good about the world because we shouldn't be feeling good about the world.

We live outside of Eden, you guys. It sucks out here. We're dying. You're dying. Do you know that? I'm dying. It's terrible, actually. It's not okay.

What happens out here? And, you know, all the way that we anesthetize ourselves, you know, with our devices and creature comforts. And it's just, the book of Job is trying to shake us awake. The world's not okay. But man, what if? What if? Here outside of Eden, we had somebody who would stare down the worst of human pain and suffering and maintain their integrity and surrender their lives before God. Man, what if? What is? What if someone like that came along. The last sentence of the book of Job is that he dies.

And you're like, okay, well, I thought it was going to be him. But if anybody was going to do it, it would be the book of Job. And the melody continues. Retracken with me. When Jesus talked about the book of Job, he wasn't just talking about an interesting set of stories about the past. And he wasn't just summarizing like, hey, isn't this cool? This thing I just did over, you know, Passover weekend.

in Jerusalem. It just happens to match one or two prophecies in the Old Testament. What he's saying is that the whole thing's about him. Like the whole thing is about him. Job is Jesus. Are you tracking with me? And what I mean when I say that is Job is one among the whole mosaic of characters in the Hebrew Bible that is trying to tell us what's wrong with the world, about what's wrong with us, about the kind of place that we're living in. And what's the way out here? What's the way out here? and every cycle of the melody just keeps focusing in on one solution man if we just had one human who actually didn't listen to the snake who actually didn't give in to the desires and the creature comforts that get us all to compromise and redefine good and evil by our own wisdom in our own

eyes man what if someone like that came along and it's like it's like the Hebrew Bible gives you this silhouette and Jesus of Nazareth just walks right into it. That's what he's saying. And so this summary right here, it doesn't just summarize the book of Job. It's actually the life of Jesus. And this is the next slide. And I'll end with this. Just think through the story of Jesus with me. All four of the Gospels present Jesus to us as God's chosen, favored, anointed one, his righteous and blameless one. Jesus is baptism. Jesus is marked. as God's blameless, chosen Messiah. What's the very next thing that happens in all of the gospel accounts?

Jesus is led into the wilderness, by whom? Who takes Jesus into the wilderness where he begins to suffer? The spirit. And what's really interesting is that when the spirit brings Jesus, on purpose, into a period of suffering, we're like, yeah, go Jesus. Do it on my behalf, please. But when God brings Job into suffering on behalf of his arrogant friends,

so that his prayer can cover for their sins, we're like, that's not fair. Are you with me? But it's the same thing. It's the same thing. Jesus goes into the wilderness and he suffers unjustly, and he begins this journey of shouldering and carrying all of the suffering and the failure and the compromise of all of the history of the train wreck of in history outside of Eden.

And he begins to shoulder it. And he begins to redefine what it's going to be to crush the snake. And it's not going to be by beating him at its own game. It's going to be by giving up power and surrendering power. And Jesus emerges victorious from that wilderness. And he begins to encounter all of these hurting people. And notice Jesus gets angry a number of times in the gospel accounts about him. And at every moment, like when a man with skin disease comes up to him,

this is in Mark's account of Jesus meeting the leopard, and Mark tells us that Jesus got really angry. Who's he angry at? I'm really certain it's not God. Really certain it's not God. How did Jesus reach a place where he could see people suffering in a way that was so unjust and so tragic? And he did not question the character of God.

Do you know who it made it angry at? It made him angry at that snake. Jesus described his healing ministry as breaking into the house of a highway bandit that had robbed all of this plunder from people and he's here to get back what belongs to God. Are you with me? When Jesus saw that woman's in the Gospel of Luke

and her back was malformed and she had been bent over for 18 years and what he said is, man, this woman has been enslaved to the snake. for 18 years, it ends today. When Jesus saw his suffering world, the one that he was angry at was that hostile one, who's responsible in all of the roads of cause and effect of human evil and suffering within the biblical story

all lead back to the moment that humans believe the lie. And we've been believing the lie ever since. And that's the one that Jesus is angry at. And so when we read the book of Job, the one that all of our frustration and angst and anger ought to be directed at is Hasatan. Are you with me? And God in his mysterious purpose and mercy has raised up a righteous servant who will go into suffering and emerge victorious out the other side. And that's exactly the story of Jesus. That's the story that Jesus saw himself fulfilling. And so the story of Jesus, the Hebrew Bible, the book of Job, it doesn't give us an answer to the things that we wish the Bible would speak to, which is why.

But what it does tell us is what God is doing about human suffering. And it's not an answer that you can put in your pocket because God's response was a person. God's love become human to become the righteous intercessor that you and I all could be but we just perpetually fail to be and Lord have mercy upon us and he has

that he has sent the one righteous intercessor who is the greater than Nella the greater than Abraham and the greater than Job and so my journey with the book of Job at this point is my life is I want Job to become my brother brother and my teacher, to teach me how to lament, to teach me how to become intolerant

towards the tragic evil and suffering, and to take my confusion and my despair and my anger and to pour it all out before God, trusting, trusting that the suffering and the victory of Jesus over death is the solution to the riddle in ways that I can't possibly comprehend. And it's not, and I'll close with this, it's not a kind of solution that you can just like walk away from. Like we're a community of apprentices to Jesus. And what that means, at least I think what it means is that this melody, like Jesus was the crescendo of all the notes of the melody. But like the song didn't stop with him. Like it's still going.

And so what it means to be a Christian that is a Messiah. person is to allow my life to become another cycle of the melody. Not because I think I can save the world, but because I'm pretty sure I'm connected to the one who did. And the only way I know how to allow him to save me is to take on the melody in my own life story. And so all of a sudden, the book of Job can become like our coach and our mentor for what is going to mean for each one of us

to stare into the suffering that is certain for each one of us. And if it hasn't crashed into your life yet, it will, and who are you going to be angry at? And I want to be angry at the right person, if you could even call a hostile one a person. And what I want to be angry at is not God. What I want to do is to imitate

the patience and the suffering and the laments of Job. And so my hope for all of us is that we can become a community that learns how to lament and how to model our righteous intercession based on the righteous intercession of the ultimate righteous servant of God. May God have mercy on us and may it be soon.