Sermon Tone Analysis

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Emotion
Anger
Disgust
Fear
Joy
Sadness
Language
Analytical
Confident
Tentative
Social Tendencies
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
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Anger
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One of the hallmarks of being a child is the inherent drive to ask questions.
What is the single most asked question by a child?
Why?
Why daddy?
Why?
It doesn’t take long as a parent to realize that the answer to a lot of those questions is, “I don’t know.”
“Daddy, why do cats purr?” “I don’t know.”
Even scientist have no real idea why cats purr.
Most think cats purr when they are happy, but they also purr when they are eating, or injured, or giving birth.
We really don’t understand why they do it.
In fact there are a lot of things we don’t understand- even with all of our scientific knowledge, we don’t know why.
A species of glowing beetles known as Synchronous fireflies, indigenous to Tennessee’s Great Smokey Mountains, are a rare and striking sight.
They have the unique ability to synchronize their blinking.
How they are able to do this is still not known.
Why whales sing, why certain animals glow, why humans yawn, why the sun’s corona is hotter than its surface, how do birds migrate without google maps, how do salmon know to return to the exact place of their birth, why 9 out of 10 people are right handed, and the list goes on and on.
There are many things that we do not know.
Yet the question why? has been the chronic question plaguing the mind of Job throughout the book.
Job has been sitting in the ash heap, the garbage dump of his culture, since chapter 3.
And from the very beginning Job has been asking the question, why?
Wherefore = why
Wherefore then = why
Wherefore = why
Wherefore = why
The question of why? has soured over time and Job’s question of
“Why would you do this to me, God?”
“How could you do this to me, God?”
Job’s question of why had been polluted in his mind into a compliant against God.
This led Job to his courtroom case against God.
His avowal of innocence- summary.
There was a fundamental flaw in Job’s relationship with God.
There was a critical misunderstanding of God’s persona and character- retribution theology.
I am innocent God, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!?!
And so God answers Job.
Job asks why?
God asks who?
Who are you Job?
And most importantly who am I?
God’s answer to Job reminds us that the book of Job is not ultimately about Job or suffering after all; it is about God and our relationship to Him.
What does God want Job to understand about Who He is?
What about Job’s relationship to God needs to change?
I believe we find two truths that God wants us to understand about Who He is.
I.
The God who is wise and powerful enough to create is wise and powerful enough to manage my life too
The God who is wise enough and powerful enough to bring into existence and to maintain all of the created universe has to be wise enough and powerful enough to manage my little tinny life as well.
A. Introductory Issues
1.
The Whirlwind
God answers Job out of the whirlwind
Notice the first word of Ch 38- “Then” We need context!
Fair weather = golden splendor
bright light, clouds, wind, golden splendor, awesome majesty, great power, abundant justice and righteousness, a healthy fear of God.
I picture Elihu standing there finishing his speech to Job and he is overwhelmed by the approaching storm, he has to shout to be heard over the roar of the wind- “See God is here is terrible glory and majesty and justice and righteousness”
Then, God answered Job out of the whirlwind
Whirlwind is the same term used to recount Elijah’s departure into heaven (2 Kings 2:1, 11) and Ezekiel’s experience when he saw the Lord (Ezek.
1:4).
Job used a form of this word to complain that God was crushing him with a tempest (9:17).
The same form occurs in
The word way (derek) means “road” or “path” and parallels the next phrase, which poeticizes the clouds as God’s dust-raising footsteps.
The verse reads literally: “In whirlwind and in storm is His way, and clouds are the dust from His feet.”
Why does God appear to Job in a whirlwind?
What has Job’s life resembled these past months?
A Whirlwind.
I think God is letting Job know that not only does God allow whirlwinds in our lives and that He is sovereignly able to use them for His own purposes.
It is more than that- God’s way, his footprints are in the whirlwind.
God is personally present in our lives in the very midst of the whirlwinds.
God sometimes allows whirlwinds into our lives.
He even allows them in the lives of the righteous.
But He is personally there all the while.
At the heart of the sufferings, and the heart of the message of the book of Job is a God who we can have an authentic personal relationship with, even in the midst of the whirlwinds.
2. The Lord answered Job
Wow, God condescended to answer Job.
This has been Job’s plea from the beginning:
I want to know what he would answer me!
This whole time Job has been convinced that God has either been absent or unconcerned.
But silence is not the same thing.
God has been silent, but not absent.
All throughout God's answer, He quotes Job and Elihu showing that He has been present and listening all along.
Now God answers.
He many not explain, but He does answer, and it is enough for Job.
3. Tell me what you know
Who are you Job?
And pressing to the matter at hand what do you know?
You are finite, fallen, frail human.
You have darkened my counsel, you have spoken words without knowledge.
His greatest fault, however, is to presume that his own finite mind can comprehend the infinite mind of God.
With such presumption, Job has been staggering along the border between limiting God’s power and denying His justice.
Essentially at the end of Job’s oath of innocence, he challenges God to an ethics debate.
Job wants to talk about issues of right and wrong, innocence and guilt, justice and unfairness.
God doesn’t talk about any of those things.
God is more concerned with the real issues.
God wants Job to tell Him what He knows.
In fact, though our translations alternate words for sake of variety, the word know appears in every verse in 2-5.
38:2, “Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?”
38:3, “Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and thou shalt make me know.”
38:4, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare if thou knowest understanding.”
38:5, “Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest, or who hath stretched the line upon it?”
God makes his point abundantly clear in
The Lord’s first point is to rebuke Job for speaking on the presumption of knowing all about God’s works and ways, of having all the facts at his disposal.
4.
Not why? who?
When something bad happens in our life, the first question that instinctively comes into our minds is WHY?
But answering our “why” is never God’s primary concern, nor our chief need.
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