“Job - The End” Job 41: 1-8, 42: 1-17

We’ve reached the end of the book of Job. Everything has been restored. Job is prosperous again. All is right with the world. “The end”. 

The truth is we abuse the book of Job and diminish it’s teachings if we simply read chapter one “there once was a man named Job” who was blameless and upright and jump to chapter forty-two’s “happily ever after” and forget about everything that has happened in between. 

Job has suffered and suffered deeply. He has lost seemingly everything and then is beratted by his friends who at first simply sit with him in his suffering, a comforting presence, only to accuse him of sinning before God. They were essentially saying Job you brought this all upon yourself. You need to figure out why God is so angry with you. 

That leads Job to lament - laying his heart out before God. And God responded to him. Last week we heard in God’s response that he is the creator of everything. Today we hear about God’s power in a series of questions to Job. Can Job draw out the Leviathian with a fish hook? Of course not. Will it speak words to Job? Nope. Can Job play with it like it was a little bird? Absolutely not. But God can. For God has power over even the oceans and everything in it. 

And Job finally responds to God saying “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you”. In other words, God, I thought I knew you before, but really I only knew what I had heard about you. It was enough to make me trust you, even in the midst of all of this, but now - now I’ve experienced you more fully.

Friends, there is such a big difference between hearing about God and having an experience with God. Your experience with God may not be the same as mine, but they change us. 

In United Methodism we have this method to reflect theologically that’s called the Wesleyan Quadralateral. This is a really big word to mean that we have four different things that come together to inform how we think about things. The first and most important is scripture. The Word of God. Then the other three are tradition, reason, and experience. For John Wesley, we couldn’t really have assurance about something until we had a personal experience.
Job had this new experience of God coming and talking with him, and it changes him. It changes how he perceives God. And it makes him realize the theology - or what he believed - about God previously was a box that he could not longer fit God in. In other words, Job’s experience helps him realize new things about God that expand what he believes. 

Sometimes in our haste to make people feel better when they are suffering, we try to impose what we believe about God on them. But in the midst of their grief, they just aren’t there. They haven’t experienced that aspect of God yet. 

I want you to think of the most profound experiences that you have had with God. What were they? Were they always times of joy? If not, how did sorrow open up your heart to God?  How did that experience change you and help you grow closer to God?

Sometimes it isn’t other people that keep us from having experiences with God, but rather ourselves. We become hyper focused on wanting things to return to how they were that we flee from any change, even if that change is how we experience and think about God. 

One of my favorite books in the Bible is the book of Genesis. It is what we have been working through on our Thursday night Bible Study for the last few months. I love that it contains stories of broken people who have these profound experiences with God - stories that we can find ourselves in the midst of. 

One such story is about Jacob before he becomes Israel. Jacob was known as a trickster. He tricked his brother and father to the point where he had to flee to his Uncle’s home. Then he tricked his uncle. Now he finds himself in this in between space. He and his wives and children and moving back to the land from which he originally fled. He sends everyone ahead of him into the land while he stays behind for the night and has this experience where he wrestles with an angel, or God. And in the midst of this wrestling he is wounded, but does walk, or limp away, with a powerful experience. His name is changed. And he has a blessing that would carry on for generations. 

Why do I bring up Jacob in conjunction with Job? Because in many ways, Job, too, has been wrestling with God. His heart hurts. He feels broken. He is looking to God, but he wants to see God as he understood God before. Now, he is walking away with a new understanding of God. A blessing that opens up his word and his relationship with God. 

Friends, I do not want to romanticize our pain. Suffering is hard. We all have deep hurts in our lives. Rather, I want to ask us if our image of God is big enough to bear all of our hurts? Or have we made God so small that we feel that we need to defend God in the midst of our pain instead of simply going to God in prayer. 

Or when it isn’t our own suffering and pain, we have made God so small, that all we do is dismiss the pain of others in a misguided attempt to protect God. 

The book of Job reminds us that God can handle our pain. That God walks with us through our suffering. And that God can meet us right where we are at, even if it is a place that we would rather not be, and change us. That change may not mean everything magically going away, but that change mean a new dimension in our relationship with God on the other end. 

So what is the happy ending in Job? Maybe it isn’t that all of his blessing were restored and he had new children and a big house and herd. Maybe the happy ending, the blessing, is how his view of God is changed through all of this in a way that touches God in a powerful way. Maybe just maybe, there is a blessing and a change waiting for us as well. 

Let us pray…