A Fresh Perspective

Job’s patience gives way to defiance, which in turn leads to the objections and complaints of Job’s three friends. In his defiance Job questions and even curses God. Job’s friends come to God’s defense and urge Job to repent of his sin. They, like Job in the beginning, are entrenched in a theology of reward and retribution. They believe all this is all happening to Job because he has sinned. That’s how they understand life to work. They assume Job’s misfortune is due to God’s punishment. While this dialogue and argument back and forth between Job and his friends is going on, God is silent. Then, after all is said, God shows up. God speaks. The writers says, “Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.” Do you find that interesting? Out of a whirlwind, out of a tornado God speaks. Maybe one aspect of God speaking out of a whirlwind is to say that God speaks however God chooses to speak – to anyone and in any way God wants. No one can pin God in or figure God out or claim to k...

Our story begins with Nicodemus, a Pharisee and a religious leader, coming to Jesus by night. He comes by night possibly to avoid being seen in the day. He is a Pharisee, and the official Pharisaic position about Jesus is very negative. I suspect he doesn’t want to risk his reputation and position and standing with his group, where he is recognized as a leader, where he has status and clout. The power of the group to tell us who we are and keep us in the dark, in the night is powerful. In his book, Letters to a Young Doubter , the late William Sloan Coffin says that when he was chaplain at Yale, he would sometimes get requests from seniors to write a letter of recommendation to some highfalutin school like Harvard Law or Columbia Medical School. He mostly wrote about their character and integrity rather than their academic achievements or potential, which to some students was not totally satisfactory. Coffin describes it this way: “Never mind that I enumerated some sterling extra...

For many chapters God has been silent and that perhaps as much as anything is basic to Job’s agony and dilemma. In our text today God finally responds. God speaks. But God does not speak to a single question Job agonized over. Instead of answers God responds with more questions. Basically God asks: Who are you to question how I do things? Where were you when I created all these different forms of life? What do you know about all of this? Can you influence the elements of this vast creation? Do you have the wisdom to run things? So instead of answers, Job gets more questions that seem to be aimed at putting him in his place. But the amazing thing about this is that this seems to be enough. I will say more about that later. But first note how God speaks. God speaks out of a whirlwind. What’s the significance of that? Maybe it’s a way of saying that you can’t hold God down, you can’t limit the way God works to four spiritual laws, or the Nicene creed, or the Baptist faith and messag...

In his book, Letters to a Young Doubter , William Sloan Coffin says that when he was chaplain at Yale, he would sometimes get requests from seniors to write a letter of recommendation to some highfalutin school like Harvard Law or Columbia Medical School . He mostly wrote about their character and integrity rather than their academic achievements or potential, which to some students was not totally satisfactory. Coffin describes it this way: “Never mind that I enumerated some sterling extracurricular qualities. Never mind that in order to be accepted into Harvard Law or Columbia Medical School you had to be in the ninety-seventh percentile and to graduate ninety-eight. Just because I didn’t say they would be in the ninety-ninth percentile, they felt they had somehow failed.” Coffin ends by concluding: “Such is the power of higher education to tell you who you are!” I think that if Jesus had not been listening to God and open to the leading of the Divine Spirit, he may have ...