00:00:00:37 – 00:00:29:08
Clint Loveall
Hey everybody. Thanks for joining us. Appreciate you being with us as we continue through the book of Job. And as we kind of wrap up the the prolog of job or the the first, the narrative portion at least. And today, we meet, we almost double our character list so far as now, really, the spotlight narrows down very much to Joe Job.

00:00:29:09 – 00:01:01:59
Clint Loveall
His wife has said her piece. We’ve had the appearance of Satan, the Satan who’s now out off the stage in the backdrop, not to be heard from again. Now we really shift to, consider jobs situation. He has twice now lived up to God’s expectations. He has proved God right in God’s predicament that he would not curse God.

00:01:02:04 – 00:01:39:06
Clint Loveall
He has proved the Satan wrong. And now the stage is set for the arrival of three other characters. These are called friends of job and really, for the next. Almost 30 chapters. This is going to be the bulk of the conversation. Job and these three friends are going to engage in a series of, speeches. Maybe you could call it dialog.

00:01:39:07 – 00:02:13:28
Clint Loveall
In fact, I think tomorrow we’ll look specifically at how we read those things as we move into that section. But today we see them arrive on the scene and we see their reaction to job. So, let me read a few verses here starting with 11. Then we’ll come back and talk them through. Now, when job’s three friends heard all of these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home, Eliphaz the terminate builded the shoe.

00:02:13:28 – 00:02:48:54
Clint Loveall
Eight and so for the Nehemiah eight they met together to go and counsel and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud. They tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

00:02:48:59 – 00:03:15:45
Clint Loveall
This is in some ways within the story, a functional bridge. This moves the narrative from the heavenly realms and job’s suffering to now an exploration of that suffering. And it does so with the arrival of these three characters. But if there is a more profound and beautiful way to introduce them, I don’t know what it is.

00:03:15:45 – 00:03:41:58
Clint Loveall
In fact, if the book of job ended at the last verse that we read here, it would be incredibly insightful for how we approach people who are suffering. I think there is a lot to commend. You’re probably going to end up, as we go through the narratives or the discourses, you may end up not feeling real great about job’s three friends.

00:03:42:03 – 00:04:15:23
Clint Loveall
They give us some reason to kind of, they get kind of rough with Jobe down the road a little bit, but here. Michael, what a beautiful response. They have to this friend. First of all, they come to him. Second of all, they they grieve on his behalf and then they join him in silence. So there’s a lot to be said here for what we can learn about how how we suffer with someone.

00:04:15:34 – 00:04:37:37
Michael Gewecke
I think that’s absolutely true. I think this cuts against maybe just the edge of what we talked about in the last study, when we were dealing with job’s wife. I do think the way that the text presents these friends and their response to the fact that when they come and we we literally have this here they come, sat with him seven days, seven nights.

00:04:37:37 – 00:04:57:37
Michael Gewecke
No one speaks a word that they’re silent. Right? What a contrast to his wife who comes with this, this great ultimatum. Right? Curse God and I, I think that there is a way in which this is highlighted. It lifts off the page because of that. And I think to all credit should be to those to whom it’s due.

00:04:57:37 – 00:05:23:34
Michael Gewecke
In this situation. We have these three friends, the scholars talk about the fact that, though we don’t really know, exactly what these names would be in terms of both its original meeting and where they come from. There’s scholarly debate about these things. What we should know is that their fellow countrymen, they are those who, Jobe would know.

00:05:23:34 – 00:05:51:12
Michael Gewecke
They would know him. So these are people of of similar stock and similar life experiences and similar religion. And to their credit, they get together and they’re going to go and console Joe. They’re going to comfort him. And so great is job’s distress. So great is the physical, infirmity affliction that’s come over him. We have very clearly they do not recognize him.

00:05:51:25 – 00:06:16:22
Michael Gewecke
And that doesn’t mean that they don’t. I mean, they obviously come and they they know who he is. But the idea he’s been so affected by this suffering, it’s so apparent we even had, you know, this idea that it was from the tip of his head to the soles of his feet. So has it affected his external visage that, here the writer lets us know they don’t from a wreck, from a distance, they couldn’t identify him.

00:06:16:22 – 00:06:51:13
Michael Gewecke
This is the extent of his suffering. Yeah, Clint, it. If Jobe started as a book portraying a character who had everything at this point in a remarkable economy of words, it’s not taken very long. It is abundantly clear now. Jobe has nothing. It’s all gone. Everything’s stripped away such that even these friends who come to console and grieve with him are struck speechless, unable to explain this man that they find.

00:06:51:18 – 00:07:24:27
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And from here you probably know this much about the book of Job. We’re going to go on to have conversations with these four men, between these four men, of why Jobe is suffering. But I think if there is a takeaway here for us in terms of a response to suffering, while we’ll get into some of the theology later, here we see a wonderful pastoral response that nobody starts there.

00:07:24:32 – 00:07:40:27
Clint Loveall
They don’t show up with answers. They don’t. They sit with Jobe, they see his suffering. They’re affected by it. They sit with him and they don’t speak. And there is,

00:07:40:31 – 00:07:41:42
Michael Gewecke
This is very hard to do.

00:07:41:49 – 00:08:24:49
Clint Loveall
So much to be said for the wisdom to stay silent when words aren’t necessary, or when words don’t seem up to the task or adequate for the moment. And and here, these friends simply endeavor to be with job. And, job is not really a book about pastoral care, but we can, I think, learn a great deal from the initial reaction of these three men who empathetically, simply give their presence to their suffering friend.

00:08:24:54 – 00:08:56:58
Clint Loveall
It’s ironic in the book of Job that the trouble doesn’t start until the speaking starts. But but even so, I will give them. I will give the friends. This job is the first one that’s going to speak. So, what they say from here on is going to be a response to job, but their initial response to job’s situation is is very profound, and I think shows a great deal of wisdom.

00:08:57:10 – 00:09:20:44
Clint Loveall
If people who are hurting, what they need from us is generally not answers and we don’t have answers. So if we’re able to offer our presence and our love and our compassion, if we’re able to sit with, as these friends do, I think there’s so much to be said for that.

00:09:20:49 – 00:10:03:05
Michael Gewecke
I think you’re caught in sight there that has such immediate applicability. Is that we are often tempted to think that dire circumstances, great suffering, that these are moments when there is a obligation to say something, that we have to show up to the receiving line at a funeral home, or we need to come in to coffee with a person who we know is lost, someone, or whatever the circumstance of suffering, we find ourself being brought into, and we find ourselves feeling like, well, a person of faith should have something to say, and then we end up cheering coming out of our lips.

00:10:03:05 – 00:10:40:08
Michael Gewecke
Some trite comment or, some simplistic sort of, saying. And we think to ourself, well, that’s the best that I could muster. Well, when the truth is, I think what you see in these friends is the presence of one who loves and cares for another is at the base line the best that we can offer presence with one another, and awareness that that discomfort that we have in ourselves that I don’t have anything to say is actually a recognition and an honoring of the fact that this situation and experience that this person is having is indeed beyond human wisdom.

00:10:40:22 – 00:11:02:36
Michael Gewecke
And Clinton, your insight there once again, I just that it all starts going downhill once the words start flying is not the core lesson. Trying to be taught by Jobe here. I think we’re seeing some devotional meaning in the text, but I certainly think it has a lesson to teach us, even if it’s not the primary lesson that was intended here.

00:11:02:36 – 00:11:18:54
Michael Gewecke
I think it is a important lesson, because once we find ourselves in these circumstances where we feel like words are obligated and quite frankly, we don’t have words to say, that’s when we often find ourselves in situations we later wish we had not been in.

00:11:18:59 – 00:11:56:48
Clint Loveall
Well, and again, the book of job is going to move to a focus on explanation, right? It’s going to explore why these things are happening. But when we do that, we take the focus off the one who is suffering, the experience of suffering. And there may be a time for that, but it is certainly not. Initially. It is certainly not in the aftermath or during the pain that the person is feeling in my my study Bible, here or my Bible offers some study notes that I think are helpful.

00:11:56:52 – 00:12:36:04
Clint Loveall
It claims that there is a Jewish tradition to let the mourner speak first, and job’s friends instinctively know that words would be inadequate. The only thing for these men to do is to be present with Joe in his misery. And I don’t know, I can’t tell you that that’s accurate. With complete confidence. But letting the mourner speak first is, if that is a Jewish tradition, it strikes me as probably a wise one.

00:12:36:09 – 00:12:57:37
Clint Loveall
With with something to be said for it. I don’t, I we don’t need to do a whole lot more with this. Again, this in the context of the story, this little passage is a bridge. It’s going to take us from the behind the scenes explanation of why Joel is suffering the frontal view of job’s own suffering.

00:12:57:52 – 00:13:22:49
Clint Loveall
And now we’re going to get to the philosophy of theology of the exploration of why and why not. Job is suffering. Now, the interesting thing is that as we do that as readers, we already know that answer. We are going to be able to evaluate the speeches of job and his friends through the lens of what we already know about job’s situation, that they do not know.

00:13:23:00 – 00:13:45:38
Clint Loveall
And that lends this book a very interesting vantage point. Having said all that, pastorally speaking devotional reading of this passage, there is a lot to learn in how we approach people who are struggling, who are suffering, who are grieving. And I think there’s wisdom here for us.

00:13:45:43 – 00:14:11:15
Michael Gewecke
One very, very quick note here at the end, Clint, that the idea of them coming and throwing dust in the air, one of the scholarly notes there is there’s a possible resonance and undermining possible there. But the idea of, throwing dust in the air and there being boils on people’s skin, new tests are an Old Testament story.

00:14:11:16 – 00:14:39:07
Michael Gewecke
Excuse me? That this idea that possibly interwoven throughout the story, this story is other Jewish anchor points. And I think whether or not that’s true, I do think that’s a helpful way to read stories like this, because often times just below the surface are these little nods, sometimes maybe exactly intentional, and sometimes they just kind of bubble up, even in the writer’s mind.

00:14:39:12 – 00:15:00:13
Michael Gewecke
And I just think these, these little things under the surface of, well, maybe it’s the custom that you don’t speak first. Maybe there’s this reference to an Old Testament tradition, maybe that that’s part of the thing that makes this story not just about individuals. It makes it about a people’s experience. And I think that’s worth remembering here, Clint, all the way back to the beginning.

00:15:00:18 – 00:15:28:10
Michael Gewecke
Yes. We have three friends coming to comfort Joe. There’s a way in which these three friends represent Israel writ large as they are wrestling over various seasons of their existence in suffering, in moments of injustice. I think there’s a way in which this story is larger than just the individualization that we sometimes do to it. I think it it tells the story of those who have suffered along the way.

00:15:28:10 – 00:15:31:46
Michael Gewecke
And there are moments in which you see that peek through.

00:15:31:51 – 00:16:09:10
Clint Loveall
I think as we close this introductory, the first two chapters, the narrative portion of job, but it it is a troubling place for the reader to be. Now, on two occasions we have seen this heavenly character, this spiritual character, the Saturn Challenge. God and God allow this suffering to be brought upon. Job. We are not going to spend a great deal of time there because so much of the rest of the book is going to allow us to dig into those themes.

00:16:09:25 – 00:16:39:02
Clint Loveall
I want you, I want to assure you that we’re not ducking that part of the book, that that is the central in some ways, that that’s the central problem. The central struggle of this book is that we know Jobe does not deserve this suffering. And, and so because we’re going to repeatedly be coming back to that idea, I don’t think it is necessary that we dig in now.

00:16:39:07 – 00:17:07:13
Clint Loveall
But as we catch our breath before we move into the next section of job, it it is worth reflecting on the things that we already know. And we can we can revisit some of that conversation tomorrow as we think about how to move in and how to read the bulk of this book, what we gain from it, what we do not gain from it, and the way in which, it moves the story along.

00:17:07:13 – 00:17:24:36
Clint Loveall
But, if you’re feeling troubled by what we’ve read, this is probably okay, maybe even good. I think that’s the intention. And don’t worry, we’re going to spend we’re going to spend some time there.

00:17:24:41 – 00:17:34:27
Michael Gewecke
If Jobe doesn’t leave you in thoughts without simple answers, then I submit that we’ve maybe not done a good job of reading it.

00:17:34:31 – 00:17:40:37
Clint Loveall
Job it. Yeah, in many ways, Jobe leaves us with more questions than answers.

00:17:40:42 – 00:17:54:21
Michael Gewecke
I would say if you found this conversation helpful, insightful, and interesting, give it a like, Would certainly love for you to subscribe so you don’t miss the ongoing conversation. Like, will happen tomorrow. Certainly hope you are. Well. And, until then, be blessed.