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What is the object of your desires? Have you ever thought about the meaning of that question?
To answer that question, you first need to know what you desire. Then, once you have that figured out, if you ever figure it out, you need to determine what will provide you with satisfaction of that desire.
The object of your desire is what you most long for. But, many of us do not even know how to answer that first question. This is often because built into us is a desire for that which this world cannot satisfy.
The Great Symbiosis
In the ancient times, it was commonly believed that people existed to meet the needs of the gods and then the gods would meet the needs of the people.
So, the needs of the people and the gods defined the system. “Doing right” meant meeting the needs of the gods, and you know you have done right when the gods met your needs. Righteousness or ethics had little to do with anything.
So, for most people in the Ancient Near East, which is the area in which the Old Testament events took place, the book of Job would have made no sense.
Who could think of serving a god for nothing? Why would you? How could you know you were serving him?
But it was different for the Israelites, whose God gave specific instructions for living. Israel’s God did not require his people to meet his needs. He has everything he needs. It is not a symbiotic relationship, but a covenantal relationship. Less like master and slave and more like a marriage.1
So, imagine this scenario…
You have a boss who communicates really poorly and is quite unpredictable. But, he pays you reasonably well and the work is decent, so you keep working for him.
Every so often someone gets promoted and others get fired. No one really knows what will cause him to fire or promote people. But, those who have worked there a long time have taken notes and think they have a pattern figured out.
In the past, there have been a string of people who seemed to get fired after becoming too efficient at their job. They would finish their work early and then either slack off, go home early, or help others with their work.
So, what people have figured out is that, if you finish your work early, just keep looking busy so the boss doesn’t fire you for being too efficient.
For many years, you have never been able finish your work early. You haven’t been very eager to do so because you didn’t want to risk getting fired. But, one day rumours started going around that Judith finished her work for the day early and instead of appearing busy, she went to the boss and told him that she was done her work.
And you know what happened? She got promoted! So, suddenly everyone was trying to get their work done early. And you were the first one to do it. So, you promptly walk over to the boss’s office to get your promotion. But, you didn’t get promoted. You were just given more work.
Later, you were talking to Judith, the one who got promoted. It turns out she didn’t get promoted because she finished her work early but because she brought the boss some cupcakes. So guess what everyone started doing?
This is sort of how the ancient people thought about their gods. It was a lot of guesswork, trial and error, and hoping that your god would be pleased with your offerings.
Then along comes the story of Job, which was probably a story passed down through the generations from the time of Abraham. The descendants of Abraham would have started to understand how this God operated. He was far more interested in your character than what you can offer him.
Abraham’s God is a god of compassion and mercy. He wants people to care for one another, to represent him rightly to the world.
Why is this important to understand? Because we are at the climax of the thought experiment in which Job is the central figure.
At the beginning of the story, the challenger, Satan, said to God, “All people are the same… they’ll only worship you if you give them something in return.”
Job is the case study to prove that it’s possible to be devoted to God even if it yields no return. It is the lesson to show that the God of Abraham is not interested in a symbiotic relationship, but in a covenant relationship.
In the words of C.S. Lewis, he doesn’t want cattle who would eventually become food. God wants servants who will eventually become sons.
Disinterested Righteousness
The difference between people who are constantly evaluating God’s approval of them based on whether or not they are suffering and those who are devoted to God regardless of their circumstances is what can be referred to as disinterested righteousness.
Job’s declaration in 27:1–6 proves that his righteousness is disinterested and that the Challenger’s contention against God’s decision to bless and protect Job does not stand.
Just a note before I read these verses. Job is not a model to follow. The point of this story about Job is not to find a model worth imitating. Job’s words which I am about to read are not words we are meant to repeat or use as guidance for life.
These words are part of the greater story in which it is required that Job is righteous. It would be unwise for us to ever claim what Job is claiming here.
Job makes no mention here or anywhere of getting his prosperity back. Rather, he shows every intention of clinging to his integrity. He is resolved to live according to righteousness, whether it pays or not.2
This raises an important question for us today. Are we devoted to God because we think it will bring us prosperity and blessing? Before you answer with a quick, of course I am! Let me explain what this looks like.
Taking the lead from Job, such a faith would not abandon belief even if life gets difficult. But, you might say, of course I believe in God during difficult times. For many people, difficulty in life is actually when they turn most confidently to God. Why? Because we believe that God can relieve us of our difficulty.
This tendency actually proves that our righteousness is not disinterested. We are only interested in turning to God when we need something from him. What this really looks like is that when your faith and that which you love most in life collide with one another, you always choose faith.
And what is faith? It is more than continuing to believe that something is true. Faith is the character of Christ lived out in your behaviour. Job’s righteousness was not described as a right belief in God. In fact, his belief was in many ways quite flawed. Rather, his righteousness was described in terms of behaviour.
This is not to promote works based salvation, but that faith always results in the transformation of the person. If faith does not transform our character and behaviour, it is not faith, but only intellectual acceptance of an idea.
One of the distinctions of righteousness is whether or not we act purely out of self-interest in order to make our own lives more comfortable and secure.
We live in a society that is fundamentally opposed to the way of disinterested righteousness. It is extremely counter-cultural to sacrifice our own well-being so that someone else can benefit, especially when that other person has done nothing to deserve our generosity.
This is a heavy challenge for us to consider. Taking it seriously may have dramatic consequences for some of us. And some might say that by living this sacrificial way is actually benefitting us because of our rewards in heaven.
As I was reminded of this week in a message from someone, it’s like the episode of Friends in which one friend claims there is no such thing as a truly selfless act and the other friend strongly disagrees and proceeds to find a selfless act that she can perform to prove him wrong.
The flaw in this process is that even if she would have proven to find the selfless act, it would have put her in a position of being right and her friend being wrong. She benefits simply by proving herself right.
This is the flaw with much of what is referred to as Christian apologetics. Is the motive for defending Christianity to bring others into the kingdom or is it just to reassure myself that I am on the right side of the religious debates?
And, when I commit an act of kindness, serve in the church, or do my devotions, am I only interested in how I will be viewed by God and others? Or, do I act out of disinterest in how I will benefit?
I would suggest that we do not need to get ourselves all tied up in knots about it. We may start on the path of righteousness with self-interest, but if we continue down the path, our interest will become increasingly selfless.
So, my encouragement to you is to seek God’s direction for how you might live. And, if you are rewarded or recognized for this pursuit of righteousness, accept it with humility, knowing that the true reward is righteousness itself.
Concluding the Debate
In the rest of his speech, Job expresses his desire to see his enemies face what would be justice within the Retribution Principle.
His enemies could be these three companions of his who have essentially condemned him in the midst of his suffering. Or, it could be a blanket statement about his desire for any adversary to be judged as wicked.
In any case, this section is somewhat out of character because he makes such a direct appeal to the Retribution Principle. This is why at least one commentator believes this section belongs to Zophar.
I think it’s perfectly fine to attribute the speech to Job because there has been no indication on Job’s part that he has abandoned the Retribution Principle.
As I said last week, if the Retribution Principle is the way God executes his justice, then it will work out in Job’s favour because he’s the one in the right. He has nothing to repent from. He stands innocent before God.
The friends, however, are not in such a position. They stand guilty because they have tried to convince Job to appease God through repentance for something he never did so that he could get his stuff back.
The Challenger, Satan, made a case that would have been proven right if Job admitted to guilt even though he knew he was innocent. Job’s friends have seemed to almost be tempting Job to give in to this challenge.
They also humiliated and poured shame upon him throughout their speeches. They have not shown him compassion or kindness. Instead, they tried to get him to do exactly as Satan predicted.
This section of the speech in which Job tells his friends of all terrible things that will happen to them because of their wickedness marks the end of the debate.
From here, we have a poem dedicated to wisdom which is unclear by whom it is spoken or written. And then, Job offers a final defence before Elihu takes the stage.
Mining for Wisdom
I’m going to read chapter 28 in its entirety in a moment. First, I want to give you a bit of a primer so that the poetry has a chance of doing its proper work.
This poem serves as a transition from the speeches in which the friends presented their case for why Job is suffering. They began by trying to get Job to search himself for hidden sin. And they have concluded that Job must be wicked because in their view only the wicked suffer as Job has suffered.
We know they are wrong, as Job has firmly withstood their pressure to appease God in order to regain his prosperity. He has been declared righteous from the beginning and this has not changed.
Job is unwilling to compromise his integrity by producing a false appearance of repentance. As a result, the Challenger’s suggestion that Job was only motivated by reward has been proven false. Job truly does worship God for nothing.
However, Job doesn’t have all the background information that we have. He doesn’t know about the heavenly wager. He has no idea why he is suffering.
No one has provided a good and wise answer to his problem. The problem is that, again, Job, along with his friends, believes that God executes his justice through the principle of retribution. Which means that he should never have experienced this suffering.
The solution that the friends gave was that Job is guilty. But he’s not, so it’s not a correct answer. This leads Job to bring his case before God that he has not been treated justly. God has made a mistake.
And this is where the debate ends and we come to this poem devoted to wisdom. The first eleven verses tell about how difficult it is to mine for precious materials in the earth as a way of setting up the argument in the next section of the poem. Verses 12-19 begin with two rhetorical questions followed by a description of how difficult it is to find wisdom. Similarly, the final section of the poem in verses 20-28 begins with two rhetorical questions followed by the answer to the questions.
So you first have an illustration about the difficulty of mining for precious materials followed by an argument for how much more difficult it is to find wisdom, then the answer to the question, “Where can wisdom be found?”
The point of this poem is that wisdom cannot be found apart from God. All throughout the speeches until now, Job and his friends grasp for wisdom with their own abilities.
But, as we see here in chapter 28, we cannot find it in the same way as finding other precious materials. Wisdom cannot be discovered or purchased. It is not found in the mountains of Nepal or the halls of seminary. We cannot gain it through books and podcasts or even by listening to the sermons of your pastor.
So, where is wisdom found? How can we become wise? Job 28:28 tells us.
What does it say? “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.” This single sentence is the central message of Job’s story and it points us to the end of the story.
In Job 42:1–6 “Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
After Job hears from God out of the whirlwind and is set straight in his understanding of how he governs the world, he at last discovers wisdom.
As Psalm 111:10 so beautifully puts it, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding.”
And Ecclesiastes 12:13–14 “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
This is the answer to the question, where is wisdom found? God alone knows. So, you will be on the path of wisdom when you make God the object of your desires.