God - Complicated, Holy, Loving (Exodus 34:6-7)

We are on a mission to “get into the Bible,” and to “get the Bible into us.”   We as HillSong Church recognize that God has given a beautiful gift to humankind, a gift that helps us know God.  From hundreds of people in ancient times, the Bible comes to us.  The Bible is not from one hand but from many – writers, editors, prophets, priests, pastors – all inspired by the Holy Spirit over a span of more than 1000 years,.  It is a very human book.  At the same time it is the living word of God.

            We can only meet the God described in these pages if we fully accept what the Bible says about God even when it is inconvenient and not easily compartmentalized; even when it sounds different than what may have always thought.  God does not always fit the models we know.  Many passages show this.  We will focus on one – Exodus 34:6-7.

            Exodus 34:6-7 (NRSV)

⁶ The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed,

“The Lord, the Lord,
a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
⁷ keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents
upon the children
and the children’s children,
to the third and the fourth generation.”

            Do you see the difficulty? The Lord keeps steadfast love for the thousandth generations, forgiving sin.  The Lord by no means clears the guilty but visits iniquity – the painful legacy of sin’s evil and hurtful consequences – on children, grandchildren, great grandchildren.

            God will forgive all your sins and you will be in good relationship with God.

            God will punish you for your sins.  God will punish your children for your sins.  God will punish your grandchildren for your sins. 

            We need God to be consistent.  We need God to conform to descriptive categories.  God is not all that concerned about our categories.  God forgives – we can count on it.  God also takes sin seriously – with extreme seriousness.  We may not forget it.  We have to deal with God – God in God’s entirety. 

            God is not a salad bar.  We do not have the freedom to select the carrots and radishes but leave the tomatoes in their place and off our plate.  Above all, God is holy and we have to meet God in God’s holiness.  We have to realize that when we pray, we are praying to one who is Holy Other.

            Worship in our culture has become casual and comfortable.  Pastors used to wear robes with colors matching the liturgical season.  Some still do.  In other traditions, pastors used to wear suits.  Many still do.  Worshiping church goers used to dress in suits and Sunday dresses.  Many still do.  However, in increasing numbers, churches like ours have become quite comfortable in blue jeans.

            Casual dress and easy informal environments are helpful when they remove obstacles that block the path between people and God.  One of the essential accomplishments of God in the flesh – Jesus – was to clear the way so that people could get to God.  Ethnicity, ritual, corrupt leadership – Jesus came to break through these roadblocks and open the way for all people to come to God.  If in 21^st American culture informality in church life helps people get to God, then it is good.  This is why at HillSong worship is informal.

            Informal worship becomes damaging when the form leads us to think of God only as our buddy pal.  Jesus is my homeboy!  Um … No!  Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the master of my life.  Jesus is friend, yes, but a friend I turn to in desperation.  Jesus is not a friend I call back when I get around to it.  Jesus d0es not conform to my schedule.  He is King.  I am at his service.

            Exodus 34 does not say all of this in so many words.  It does give the Bible reader an early, forceful assertion of who God is.  Some background helps.

            God created the earth. God made human beings as God’s managers, the ones made in God’s image.  We are to run the world according to God’s ways.  That’s Genesis 1-2.  We have dropped this assignment.  We’ve rebelled against God, over and over.  In Genesis 3 Eve and Adam eat forbidden fruit.  In Genesis 4, Cain commits the first murder in human history.  Genesis 6-9 brings worldwide sin, the flood, and God starting over with Noah’s family.  By Genesis 11, worldwide sin has returned as humans have completely discarded God and attempted to climb to Heaven on the tower of Babel.

            God continually has to clean the messes we make.  To enlist humans as partners in the effort to maintain holiness, God selects a nation – Israel – to be his holy people.  But, Israel sins as much as the rest of humanity and by the end of Genesis, Israel is in slavery in Egypt.  In agony, Israel cries out and God brings the deliverer, Moses.

            Moses works the wonders of God and leads the people out of Egypt.  With the power of God, Moses parts the Red Sea so that the people may walk through.  Then then nation camps out at the foot of Mount Sinai while Moses climbs to meet with God.  But the people grow restless waiting.  Remember, you and I are part of the story and we are sinners.  We reject God’s ways.  We do our own thing and often, our own thing includes horrible choices that bring pain down on us and those around us.

            Israel sins as much as you and I do.  Sick of waiting for Moses and this God they can’t see, Israel makes a golden calf – a statue of gold shaped like a juvenile cow.  And they say, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4).  We are wise to not point out how ludicrous this is, worshiping something of your own making.  God saw Israel’s foolishness.  God sees the idiocy of our sins too. 

            God raged at Moses and threatened to wipe the whole nation out and start over with Moses as the new patriarch of a new people.  Moses wants no part of this and bargains and manipulates and pleads.  He argues with the holy God.  Moses begs God to reconsider.  Exodus 32 tells us that God listens to Moses’ appeal.  It says, “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people” (32:14).

            That raises questions.  Does God know everything?  Did God know the future?  Did God know in advance that God would change God’s own mind?  If God knew God would change God’s own mind, then was it really a change of mind?  The Bible makes no effort to resolve this.  It says, “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.” 

            God is a God who meets with human partners in all our sinfulness.  God reacts and responds to things humans do.  Banishing the first couple from the garden; the flood; the conversation with Moses: these are instances in which God changes course after a dynamic engagement with a person.  God does so all the while remaining who He is – God.  God’s sovereignty – His power and authority – are never compromised.  Yet, God is not predictable.  We cannot fit God into categories of sovereignty.  God is as free as God is sovereign. 

            The Lord changed his mind.  Read Exodus 32-34.  God’s chosen people were harshly punished, but not wiped out.  God met with Moses and re-established what had been given and violated.  God gave the 10 commandments and they were broken.  God gave them again.

            For Moses, a new let of law slabs was not enough.  Promises were not enough.  “Show me your glory,” Moses asked (33:18).  A cloud of smoke was not enough.  The passageway through the Red Sea – not enough.  He wanted to see God with his own eyes.  How would God respond to such audacity?  God had already thundered and threatened and now this tiny thing, a human, makes demands? 

            God said, “I will make my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name, Yahweh. … But you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live” (33:18-20).  Adam and Eve did.  They walked with God, and enjoyed the intimate love of God.  They saw God’s face regularly.  They walked with God in the cool of the day, every day.  Then they threw it away and just as humans were stained with sin, God’s holiness changed.  It had been illuminating.  After Eden it blinding.  Deadly.  But, even with the degradation of sin it wasn’t over because God is not locked in.  God could speak with Moses in person as a friend.

            And in that meeting God said to his friend, “The Lord keeps steadfast love to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity.”  The Lord also said, “The Lord by no means clears the guilty but visits iniquity upon the children of the sinner to the fourth generation.”  The Lord forgives, the Lord remembers for generations.  It becomes unofficial policy.  We will suffer for what our forbearers did. 

            The Babylonian exile was the ultimate example.  The Israelites in the Southern Kingdom of Judah for several generations turned their back on God.  Finally, in 586BC God had had enough!  God sent the mighty Babylonian empire that destroyed Jerusalem and burned the glorious temple of Solomon to the ground, punishment for generations of rebellion.  The children of the sinners were sent to exile in Babylon. 

            But then, in exile, again, God said, enough!  These people have been punished enough.  And God does a new thing.  The people are not ready for it – we never are.  The prophet of exile, the prophet Ezekiel, tells of God’s new word (Ezekiel 18). 

¹⁴ But if this man has a son who sees all the sins that his father has done, considers, and does not do likewise… he shall surely live. ¹⁸ As for his father, because he practiced extortion, robbed his brother, and did what is not good among his people, he dies for his iniquity.

¹⁹ Yet you say, “Why should not the son suffer for the iniquity of the father?” When the son has done what is lawful and right, and has been careful to observe all my statutes, he shall surely live. ²⁰ The person who sins shall die. A child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child; the righteousness of the righteous shall be his own, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be his own.

            Is this a violation of Exodus policy?  No, this is God exercising God’s freedom.  Both punishment and forgiveness are expressions of God’s love.  The ultimate new act of God’s love was to come in human form, Jesus.  Jesus is God’s new thing.  Jesus is God’s definitive statement of sovereignty and freedom. 

            Jesus is every bit as complicated as the God who forgives to the 1000^th generation and at the same time I punish to the 3^rd and 4^th generations.  Religious experts could not understand him, yet he was accessible to children.

Jesus certainly is holy.  The New Testament book of Hebrews also testifies to Jesus’ holiness.

Most of all, the God who would not punish his people forever, who forgave after the forbidden fruit was eaten, who protected Cain even though Cain was murderer, who opened the Red Sea to let his people pass through knowing they would sin with the golden calf on the other side – that God is fully seen in the love of Jesus on the cross. 

We have the Bible so we can know that God, worship that God, follow that God, exalt that one, the only God.  Before we attempt to define God, we admit our attempts will inevitably come up short.  We’ll try to define God any way.  But we find life and our joy is fulfilled completely when we enter the Bible and meet God.  We get to know God a bit more with turn of each page.  Like any relationship, some points are hard – even painful.  But we keep going deeper and deeper because we know there is nothing else we want or need than to know God. 

Last I week I recommended memorization as a pathway into God’s word.  Then in my newsletter article I recommended reading the Bible through in a year.  I imagine the memorization piece will work for some people and the read-through pathway will help others.

This week, I recommend that you write out specific knowledge of God.  Whether you read 4 chapters or one verse, keep a “God notebook.”  Write how your reading of the Bible helps you see and know God.  It would be interesting to do this daily for 6 months or so then go back and see who this God is that we meet in scripture.

AMEN

Stepping in the Messes I Make

I challenged our church to contemplate sin throughout this season of Lent, 2013.  This is a two-part effort. 

First, we ought to be aware of our own specific sins.  I was impatient with my wife.  I yelled at my kids.  I failed to love my neighbor when he needed it.  I harbored thoughts of revenge and violence.  I spent way too much time contemplating in detail impure thoughts that lingered in my mind.  I gave into greed and gluttony.  I neglected someone who needed help.  

All these sins committed in word and deed, and committed in thought and in the heart - I must name them, confess them, and turn from them.  And my confessing must include receiving - receiving God's forgiveness.

Second, after confession, my contemplation of sin goes to a bigger picture perspective.  Because of the fall, children starve to death in Addis Ababa and in Appalachia.  

Because of the fall, men live in emotionally-void marriages.  To seek comfort, they go and pay for sex with women they don't know.  These women are often 16 or 17 and completely enslaved by their pimps and their addictions.

The women married to the men who pay for sex with the teens who are enslaved to the pimps who are themselves addicts are also empty in the heart.  They find solace in on-line affairs in which they pour all their emotions.  Sometimes those on-line affairs turn into the physical affairs.  

Eventually the men and the women in this empty marriages turn to divorce lawyers who get rich and spend the big dollars on the women half their age they see when they are cheating on their wives.

All because of the fall.

Because of the fall, mentally deranged people shoot up schools, frustrated ex-cops hunt their former brothers-in-arms, and 15-year-old kids in America's toughest inner cities drop out of high school and kill each other with knives in gang wars.

All because of the fall.


The second part of "contemplation of sin," after confessing my own sins is what I have written here.  It is an honest coming to grips with what sin has wrought in the world.  It is thinking about sin and sin's devastating wake at a level much deeper than we normally do.

In this second part, I, Rob Tennant, acknowledge that I had my chance.  God invited me to the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  I could have passed the test Adam and Eve failed.  I am not sure lasted more than a minute.  I didn't even know what happened.  I was staring at the most incredible tree you've ever seen.  I was steeling myself to resist temptation.  I was determined to outdo even Elijah in righteousness.  I could see the chariot of fire waiting to take me.  And before I could blink, my mouth was full and fruity juice was dribbling down my chin.

There was sheer ecstasy for a moment.  Then I looked into God's eyes and saw pain you can't describe to someone unless they've seen.  Peter heard a cock crow and saw that same look in Jesus' eyes.  Then God was gone and I was in a pile reeking refuse, the smell of which would make you faint.  How did I come to stand knee-deep in filth?  I realized, I had spilled the garbage cart onto my self.  

If this sounds like a weak attempt to reproduce the brilliant image-laden writing of the greatest authors in Christian history, well, that's exactly what this is.  I admit I can't conjure up an image with the evocative voice of J. Edwards.  I can't lay it out in such a way that you are in it the way F. Craddock can.  But, the feeling underneath my feeble description is every bit as real.

I have been tired recently.  Why?  My kids wake before 5AM nearly every morning.  They are especially likely to be up 4-something AM if there is delayed opening at school or if it is a Saturday morning.  In addition to getting up that early, they always come in our room in the middle of the night.  

So, I am tired and cranky.  People suggest getting a clock and telling the kids to stay in bed until it says 6:30.  Or get a programmable clock that changes color - it goes from green to orange at 6:45.  And they can only get up when it is orange.  None of that stuff works with my guys.  I know there are superior parents who can easily get their children to go quietly to sleep at 8PM and stay in the bed until 7AM.  I know there are parents whose kids are potty-trained six months earlier than normal and reading on a 2nd grade level by age 5.  I know there are parents whose kids eat all their vegetables.  And those parents are so disciplined that if the kids don't eat what is served, they just don't eat.  And with TV drama-type precision the kids respond to this textbook discipline with obedience.  

I am not one of those parents and my kids don't respond that way.  My kids are all adopted.  Each one has a story prior coming into our lives.  Each story is full of pain, heartbreak, loss, and neglect.  When they wake up at 2AM or 4AM and they want to be with me, that's a gift!  They are giving me a gift.  They are saying, it is the middle of the night and it is dark and I am scared.  I have stuff in mind and I don't even know why it scares me.  I have memories of memories, a mom somewhere.  Something happened, and I ended up alone.  And all of it swims together through neural pathways in the grey lump in my skull.  And I wake up and I just want to be with someone safe.  And you, DAD, are who I want to be with.  

It's a gift.  And many times, I am so tried and cranky, I resent the gift and I reject the gift.

Because of the fall.  

As a I pastor, I work Sundays, so I take Fridays off.  This past Friday (two days after my own Ash-Wednesday preaching), I was home.  I thought it would be nice to sit and read a theology book comparing theories on justification.  I know that's a yawn-fest for many of you, but that's what I wanted to do.  

My (wake-up at 4AM) kids had other ideas.  They wanted Dad's attention. We shot baskets and went for walks and played video games and pushed swings and tickled.  Whew!  I could read my book.  Nope.  It wasn't enough.  If I gave two piggy-back rides they wanted three.  If I gave three hours, they wanted four.  

I got cranky.  I yelled.  I ignored them.

Because of the fall.  

I finally said, I'll just lay here (on the couch) and you two do what you want.  They slapped my head.  They climbed up and sat on my head.  They jumped over my stretched out legs (I swear my 6-year-old, the "Bam Bam Kid," is going to hyper-extend my knee one day).  If I tried to read, they would take my face in their hands, move it away from my book and to their eyes.  

I am so tired.  But, this is a gift - a gift from God.  My "tired" is a reminder that I am a Dad.  Nothing is a greater privilege than being a dad.  My "tired" is a reminder that I am a Dad with kids who want to be with me.  My "tired" is a reminder that the kids I have are not poor little orphans wasting away on the streets of a 3rd world country.  They were that.  But now, as Audio Adrenalin sings, my kids are "Kings and Queens."  My "tired," tiring as it is, is a gift from God and a reminder of how blessed I am.

The crankiness that comes when I am tired is sin trying to pour the contents of an overused, unflushed toilet all over the party-food.  The meanness that spills out of my crankiness that leads me to use words to make my little girl cry is evidence that sin is around.  

I really, really need Jesus.  Life is only good when He's in the center of everything.  I only invite Him to the center of my life when I realize how much I need him.  Too often, I don't remember I need him until I am standing in the middle of a mess of my own making.

Your Eden Temptation (Job 33, 32-37)

            Come back in time with me.  It is year 1.  We are in Eden.  What glories do you see in your mind’s eye?  The sweet juices of some unknown fruit runs down my chin.  Under a warm, vibrant, sunny sky, your bare feet feel soft earth holding you up as a gentle breezes caresses your skin.  Eden.

            We are with Adam and Eve.  And the serpent.

            No.  We aren’t with them; we aren’t “we.”  You are alone in Eden, drinking in beauty you cannot imagine.    Walking, you almost feel like you are floating, gliding along a ground that is just perfect.  You see it – the wondrous tree of knowledge.  No splendor here surpasses the brightness of this tree.  “Come, climb me,” it quietly sings to you. 

            But you do not.  God has forbidden any contact with this tree, especially the consumption of its fruit.  To eat would be to disobey.  You are not sure why you are even looking at it.  You know it is forbidden.  You are also not sure how long the serpent has been beside you.  You’re startled by his presence.  He’s quietly doing what you were doing, looking at the tree.  What is that look in his eye?

            “God won’t let you eat from this tree.”  Whoa.  The serpent has never spoken to you before.  “He’s banned this tree, hasn’t he?” 

            “God said if we eat of this tree, we will die.”  You reply.

            He smiles an odd, discomforting smile.  “No you won’t.”  I won’t you, wonder.  I won’t die.  Why would God say I would die if it is not true?

            The serpent looks away from you and back toward the tree.  “God knows that when you eat of this tree, you will know all that God knows.”  You look from the serpent to the tree, back to the serpent, back to the tree.  Once more you look to him, but the serpent is gone, as unexpectedly as he slithered up.  Now, once more, the tree; it is so inviting; so beautiful; your eyes can see its deliciousness.  What do you do?

 

            In the book of Job, the speeches of Elihu put us in Eden, in Eve’s place.  Knowing what we know now, we can say, “No, no, don’t bite, Eve.  Walk away.  That serpent is liar.”  But even knowing that, we would still be tempted beyond control standing before that tree.

            For us, Elihu is the serpent.  Job goes through his disaster in chapters 1 & 2.  He and his friends go through their exhausting dialogue in Job 3-27.  Job 28 is a poem about how impossible it is to have wisdom.  No one knows who the speaker is in Job 28.  Job is the speaker in chapters 29-31.  There he reiterates his claims of his own innocence.  The basic tension of the book is that an innocent man went through horrific suffering for no reason.  His ignorant friends blame him for his plight and say his only hope is to confess his sin.  He steadfastly holds onto his innocence and holds out hope that he will have an audience with God. 

            He gets that audience in chapters 38-41, where God speaks out of a whirlwind.  Job, blown away by awe at God’s speech, repents at the opening of chapter 42.  However, for over 2000 years, readers have debated exactly what Job was repenting of.  In the remainder of Job 42, he is vindicated by God and his fortunes are restored.  He gets back all he has lost. 

            But what of Job 32-37?  This is a speech that runs for 6 long chapters.  Elihu is never mentioned prior to his appearance.  In his speech, there is no dialogue.  Job never responds to Elihu or in any way acknowledges what he said.  After chapter 37, we never hear from Elihu again.  So why do we bother with it?

            We bother with it because this is our scripture, given to us by God.  The Apostle Paul says all scripture is inspired by God and given to teach.  What is God teaching us in Elihu’s speech?  I believe God is teaching us how to discern God’s voice.  As people of faith, we must learn to know both the truth in the message and the truth in the speaker who delivers the message.

            Is the serpent a liar?  Yes.  Are his lies obvious?  Sometimes.  Sometimes not.  God told Adam and Eve they would die in the day that they ate of the tree of knowledge.  “No, you will not die,” the serpent said.  “Your eyes will be opened.”  What happened when Eve ate, and Adam joined her?  Did they die?  No.  Their eyes were opened.  Who lied, God or the serpent?  It’s not as easy or obvious as we might hope.  We have to pay extremely close attention to every word.

            The serpent said, “You will not die when you eat.”  They did not die.  The serpent said, “Your eyes will be opened.”  Their eyes were opened.  Oh man, he just keeps nailing the mark.  Everything he says is right.  We have to listen to this one.  “Your eyes will be opened. …”  “…  You will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  There it is.  That’s the lie, hidden underneath truth.  When Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened, their first act was to get dressed.  They had been naked and unashamed.  They lived in something we cannot even conceive – a world completely free of shame, sin, guilt.  And as soon as they did the opposite of what God said, a whole new world was opened, one previously unknown.  This was a world of sin, of loss, of shame.  In that world there is death – something that did not exist in Eden, not for Adam and Eve.

            Job was a throwback kind of guy – he was an extreme throwback.  He lived an edenic type of life.  He ived free from shame and guilt.  It is said over and over in chapters one and two.  Job was blameless.  What does the blameless one do when he is jerked out of Eden by pain and loss?  Does Job sin?  Not really.  He challenges God saying he’ll use God’s own laws against God in court.  Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, Job’s friends, try to put him  in his place.  But his unblemished character and raw, unfiltered honesty overpower their shallow reliance on tradition theology.

            Then Elihu comes along, out of nowhere.  He’s been listening all the while.  Now he has something new to say.  I caution patience with him.  Elihu admits his own youth.  He spends most of chapter 32 just telling Job how much he needs to speak.  “Listen to me; let me also declare my opinion” (32:10).  “I will also give my answer; I also will declare my opinion” (v.17).  “I must speak, so that I may find relief; I must open my lips and answer” (v.20).  “But now, hear my speech, O Job, and listen to all my words.  See, I open my mouth …” (33:1-2a).  Elihu, enough already!  Out with it!

            By the way, every verse I just read was a different verse, not a re-reading of the same one.  He spends an entire chapter telling he’s getting ready to talk and that he’s mad at the three friends for failing to answer Job.  Then when he finally gets going, much of what he has to say is irritatingly similar to their speech.  So how, exactly, does he function for us as the serpent functioned for Eve.  Listening to Elihu, you might be annoyed, but not tempted to disobey God. 

            That is true until we come to Chapter 33, beginning in verse 22.  He’s running along the judgment tract, just like the self-righteous three friends, but then he brings in something new.

²²Their souls draw near the Pit, and their lives to those who bring death.²³Then, if there should be for one of them an angel, a mediator, one of a thousand, one who declares a person upright,²⁴and he is gracious to that person, and says, ‘Deliver him from going down into the Pit; I have found a ransom;²⁵let his flesh become fresh with youth; let him return to the days of his youthful vigor.’²⁶Then he prays to God, and is accepted by him, he comes into his presence with joy, and God repays him for his righteousness.²⁷That person sings to others and says, ‘I sinned, and perverted what was right, and it was not paid back to me.²⁸He has redeemed my soul from going down to the Pit, and my life shall see the light.’

²⁹“God indeed does all these things, twice, three times, with mortals,³⁰to bring back their souls from the Pit, so that they may see the light of life.

 

 

That sounds more like the New Testament than what we’d read in Job.  God rescues people – sinful people – from the pit of death.  That person, says Elihu, acknowledged his sin and God redeemed him.  He doesn’t use the word “mercy,” but that is what this sounds like.  “He has redeemed my soul … my life shall see the light,” says Elihu.  John 8:12: “Jesus spoke to them saying, ‘I am the light of the world.  Whoever followes me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’”  Elihu is speaking the Gospel.  This forgotten one, the overlooked voice in Job, is closest to our understanding of the truth we have from God.

And yet, in the book of Job, the story does not end with this Gospel of Elihu.  In fact it is ignored, and the one who ignore this young man, Job, is the one exonerated by God.  Elihu, the narrative implies, is so wrong and so off base, he doesn’t even warrant a response.  Like the ranting of a 3^rd party candidate who gets a few votes but no air time in CNN, Elihu is disregarded as inconsequential, unimportant, and wrong.

Gerald Janzen gives 8 reasons to read but not heed Elihu.  (1) Job, in chapter 26, has anticipated what Elihu would say.  There, he’s rebuking his friends, but his words work to turn back Elihu as well.  They – the friends and Elihu – claim authority, but Job says the human being cannot even understand a whisper of the outskirts of God’s ways (26:14).

(2) The fact that God never, not once acknowledges Elihu’s existence much less his speech acts to undercut the legitimacy of his message.  (3) In the epilogue of the story, Job is restored.  His friends are forgiven for speaking wrongly about God, a charge more serious than we might suppose.  Their forgiveness after Job prays for them.  But three characters are never mentioned when the story is wrapped up – the Satan; Job’s wife, and, Elihu. 

(4) As fervently as Elihu insists he won’t repeat the foolishness of Job’s three friends, much of his speech is exactly like theirs, and just as off.  (5) When Elihu promises an angel will intercede for Job, he is promising something he knows nothing about.  It is akin to a totally healthy person standing over the hospital bed of one in terrible pain and saying, “It’s not that bad and it will definitely turn out OK.”

(7) In chapter 35, Elihu says, “God does not hear an empty cry” (v.13).  But Job’s cry is not empty.  In fact, as the dialogues progress, Job’s prayers and complaints grow in richness and depth and sophistication.  Elihu’s statement that God does not hear an empty prayer is right, but his implication, that Job’s prayers are worthless, is way off.  Without meaning to, Elihu affirms Job’s approach to God.  (8) A final undercutting of Elihu cited by Janzen is the motivation that drives his speech.  Elihu thinks he is voicing God’s anger.  But the reader knows God is not angry with Job.  Elihu is venting anger – his own. 

These arguments presented as they are by Gerald Janzen illustrate why Elihu, though some of his speech sounds great, is not to be trusted.  He’s speaking what he does not know, standing on authority he does not have, and offering help that is not helpful.  So why is Elihu in here?  We’re right back to the Apostle Paul’s claim, that all scripture is designed to teach us about God.  What is God teaching in the Elihu speeches?

Janzen offers this purpose, and I think he is spot on.  He says, the Elihu speeches “stand beside the diving speeches [in chapters 38-41] to create a situation in which Job must decide which revelation is from God” (223).  Eve had that moment: she remembered that God said if she ate of the tree of knowledge, she would die.  But it looked so good.  And the serpent seemed so smart.  What was right?

Job knew the theology: if you are righteous, then your life will go well.  If you suffer and your life does not go so well, then it must mean you weren’t so righteous.  But he knew he was righteous.  Now this Elihu speaks word … many words … flowery, hopeful words.  And then the blast from the whirlwind.  What, of all Job has heard and experienced, is the truth?

We open the Bible looking for God.  Of the voices we hear, how do we recognize his?

Elihu shows that it is not enough to just read the Bible.  When we read, we have to learn to read carefully.  Maybe this means going back and reading the story again; maybe in different translations.  Maybe we have to read in a group where we get to hear how others hear it.  Just as living a life of faith requires something from us, reading the Bible requires mental and emotional investment on our parts.  We have to work to understand God’s word.

Elihu also shows us that while theology is valuable it must be read in context.  There is truth in some of what he said just as some of what the serpent said is true.  But in the overall picture of Job’s story, Elihu’s words are ill-timed and without foundation.  We have to know the truth to speak it.  For us that means we have to know Christ before we can tell others about him.  And when we read theology – writing about God – it has to fit in God’s story.

Finally, Elihu shows that when we read the Bible, reading it carefully and considering the overall story, we have to seek God.  “Open my heart as I read, O Lord, so I will hear what you are saying to me.  Make my heart responsive, O Lord, so when I hear what you have given me, I will live my life in obedience and I will be in your plans.” 

We don’t read scripture so we can say we read it.  We don’t read scripture so we can know answers or formulate theological stances.  We read scripture hoping to meet God. 

Eve followed the wrong voice and ended up cut off from God.  Job ignored the deceiver and ended restored and redeemed.  We end this morning turning to God in prayer.  Last week we concluded praying for wisdom for America.  Today we conclude praying that God would grant discernment to us as a church, a body of worshipers, and to us as individual Christ-followers.  We will hear all kinds of voices.  The noise is constant cacophonous as never before.  O God, help us filter the noise and hear you.

AMEN