Resurrection Day
Series on Job • Sermon • Submitted
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Transcript
We made it to the end of the book of Job. In this final section we have two parts to the story. We have the part of Job’s friends being scolded by God and Job re-acquiring essentially twice as much as he had before he had this great trial set before him.
I just want to briefly touch on what I have read others touch on about the first part of Job’s friends. In Job 42:8 God points out to the friends of Job that the have “not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has done.” One of the creators of this sermon series, Kathryn Schifferdecker, points out that another possible translation of the phrase “spoken of me what is right” is “spoken to me rightly”. She then goes on to discuss how in the early parts of Job’s lament you can see how Job does talk about God as we discussed last week. Job thinks he knows how God operates. However, as the story progresses we see examples of Job talking to God not about God and we only ever see Job’s friends talk about God, they never once talk to God about this great tragedy that has happened to their friend Job. In other words, they didn’t ever pray to God about Job’s misfortunes. That in and of itself is a great reminder for all of us. A reminder to talk to God not about God. If we, ourselves, are suffering then we need to talk to God about it. If we know someone who is suffering we need to talk to God about it. Prayer as many of you know is a powerful gift of the Spirit.
Job prays for his friends and and in Job 42:1-6, which we read and talked about last week, I see that as a prayer. He is talking to God. After he prays about himself and for his friends we see that the tragedy that has befallen Job is finally past him and Job is able to restore his fortunes and actually have twice as much as before thanks to God’s blessing and restoration. The loss that Job had experienced had only lasted two of the 42 chapters that we see in Job, but what Job experienced as a result of the loss is what has taken so much time to heal from.
Isn’t that true for so many of us? Usually, thought not always, the loss is a single short event. It is how we experience that loss that lasts beyond the moment. It is what it was that we lost that we carry on with us. For Job, I am sure even more so than his livestock and home, it was the loss of his children that caused the greater pain and sense of despair that Job felt throughout this story. I remember what it is like to lose loved ones. To this day I still think about conversations I would love to have with her and get her advice on life. I still miss her as I am sure many of you miss loved ones in your life as well. It is that ongoing void of losing someone that we carry on with us moving forward.
I doubt Job ever forgot the 10 children that he lost during this tragedy. I am sure that is something that, in his own way, he carried with him to the end of those old and full days Job 42:17 tells us about. Yet, at the same time, Job was able to move through that initial sorrow of loss to a new place in life. The text doesn’t say this but many commentaries I read, and I loved how they said it, talk of Job’s (and Job’s wife too) ability to move forward with their life and have children again. The phrase these commentators used was resurrection. Job experienced a kind of resurrection from the dead. He had a good life, he lost it all and had a bad life, then he encountered God in a new and profound way and had the courage to start his life again. Job experienced a resurrection day event in his life. Through his relationship with God, his friends, his wife he was able to live with his sorrow and loss and start a new life over again. He has 10 more children, just like before, but this time he gives his daughters an equal share of the inheritance. That was something only reserved for the male side of the family after the father passed away, and we see that play out in so many ways throughout the Old Testament. Yet here, I believe Job remembers the way that God took delight in all of creation equally. How God sees everything in creation as God’s children, in a way. So I believe Job took that lesson from God of loving and delighting in everything God made, and applied it to his children saying that every child, male or female, gets a share in what they have created as a family. The story even goes on to name all 3 of Job’s daughters. The beginning of Job’s story never mentions the names of any of the children and here at the end of the story not only does the story name the 3 daughters, but it leaves out the names of the sons. I believe this may be a way of Job and the author of the story emphasizing just how different Job’s life was after this event.
As I mentioned, I doubt Job ever forgot his loss, but he had a resurrection day event. He moved from sorrow and loss to a moment where he chose, with the help of God, his wife and friends, life instead of living in the loss. I hope that you can see through everything Job said throughout this story that coming to that point of resurrection wasn’t easy. Job experienced some very dark moments and thought death and never being born was better than the loss he was going through. It was that giving up and emptying himself that we talked about last week that allowed Job to move from that despair into resurrection. And as we all know, God is a God of resurrection. God gave up God’s son to sin and death so that we might never have to worry about sin and death ever again. We have been given Christ’s resurrection.
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
May we all live in the light of the resurrection of our Lord and may we, throughout our lives, experience mini resurrection days as we take that leap of embracing new life after the loss. Amen.