A Personal Relationship with God

​The Message
 
It isn’t very often that I choose to preach on passages from the Hebrew Bible.
 
That isn’t because there is anything wrong with the scriptures from the Hebrew Bible. It’s just that I tend to focus my sermons more on the story and words of Jesus.
 
But today, we’re going to talk about Job because his story is fascinating, and also a bit weird.
 
Because you may or may not be familiar with the story of Job, I think it’s worth taking a few minutes to summarize it.
 
Job is a relatively wealthy man in his era. He has a family, some property, he has money, and he has flocks of animals.
 
He also has a deep faith in God.
 
In the story, Satan and God are talking, and God basically says “look at this incredibly faithful person! No matter what happens, his faith will remain strong.”
 
Satan essentially says “yeah, sure, God. But it’s easy for his faith to remain strong when everything is going well for him! I bet his faith would waver if he didn’t have everything he has.”
 
God and Satan go back and forth like this for a while. God allows Satan to take away all the good things in Job’s life in order to show that Job will remain faithful through it all.
 
It’s a bit of an odd conversation, and it’s not really how most of us envision God these days.
 
It’s quite difficult to imagine a God who would play with people’s lives so flippantly.
 
But, the truth of the story isn’t as important as the overall moral of the story.
 
Satan ends up taking everything from Job – his home, his flocks, his children, and eventually, his health.
He ended up as a shell of his former self.
 
His wife essentially tells him to give up on God. If God is going to allow all of this to happen to you, why don’t you just give up on God?
 
His friends wonder what Job is doing to bring this chaos and wrath of God upon himself. His friends admittedly aren’t the most supportive people in this story.
 
And in the end, Job ends up crying out to God – asking to confront God face to face. He wants God to answer for the treatment he has received.
 
Now, the interesting thing about this is of course that Job doesn’t know about God’s conversations with Satan.
 
The general understanding of theology at the time was that when bad things happened in life, either God was punishing you, or Satan had snuck in and was wreaking havoc.
 
The story assumes that God allows Satan to destroy Job’s life.
 
With this understanding of God, Job does wonder for a while what he did to deserve this treatment. But he quickly begins to feel like he could not have possibly done enough bad stuff to deserve the losses he experiences.
 
So he becomes angry with God for allowing his life to essentially be taken from him.
 
But the key part of the story is that despite all of the hardships, and the assumption that God is allowing these things to happen, Job does remain faithful to God.
 
Yes, he’s angry with God!
 
But how can one be angry with God if that person has lost faith in God?
 
Anger at God necessitates a deep faith in God.
 
Job is angry at God, and he starts to demand that God answer to Job directly. He wants to talk to God face-to-face.
 
He wants to accuse God.
 
In fact, it’s almost like he wants to throw a temper tantrum at God.
 
Imagine he’s a toddler in a tantrum, kicking and screaming, punching and howling, wailing and crying.
 
He wants to stand before God, kicking and screaming and punching and howling and wailing, and he wants God to give him answers.
 
He believes he deserves this much.
 
And finally, Job encounters God. God finally shows face.
 
And Job starts kicking and screaming and punching (metaphorically), but God calmly stops him and basically says “look around. Do you see all that has been created? Who did that? Oh, I did? Mmmm hmmmm. That’s what I thought.”
 
God maybe isn’t as snarky as I made God sound, but God is pretty real with Job.
 
God wonders if Job would like to be in charge of everything.
 
In Job 38:2, God says, Why do you talk so much when you know so little?
 
God then asks Job a series of questions like: Job, have you ever made the sun rise? Or walked on the ocean floor? Can you arrange the stars? Can you help a lion hunt when it is hungry?
 
God goes on like this for a while. It humbles Job.
 
God essentially says “hey, do you want my job, or do you want to let me keep doing it?”
 
Job realizes through this conversation with God that whatever he is going through in life, there is an entire universe that also exists and must be cared for.
 
Part of the lesson in the story of Job is that he got comfortable in his cushy life. If he had been born into a different social class, his life might have looked much worse from the start.
 
He realizes that even people who are born into very different situations can remain faithful to God.
 
And that is the beauty of today’s scripture passage.
 
Job 19 is toward the middle of the book. Job is still mentally in a place where he feels like he can maintain his faith in God despite the setbacks he has experienced.
As the book goes on, we know that this becomes harder for him.
 
And yet, despite the hardships he has faced, Job holds onto hope throughout the book.
 
Yes, what his hope looks like changes over the course of the book. 
 
But it speaks volumes about his faith in God that he allows his anger toward God to bubble up to the surface, and yet he continues to desire a personal encounter with God.
 
And in the end, isn’t that all any of us really wants?
 
Those of us who believe in God desire a personal relationship with God.
 
Job wants to be able to look God in the face and say “what the heck, God?!”
 
And most of us want that opportunity, too. Perhaps not literally, but spiritually, we desire a deeply personal relationship with God.
 
That’s why we pray. That’s why we come to church. That’s why we surround ourselves with our community of faith.
 
We desire a personal relationship with God.
 
And what that looks like for each of us might be very different.
 
But like Job, when things get hard, we look to God. We might find we are angry with God at times, but that anger reminds us that we still have a deep faith in God.
 
God proved to Job that God could handle his anger. And Job received the gift of this knowing.
 
And God can handle whatever we might throw God’s way, too.
 
Sometimes, it’s easy for us to blame God for our hardships. It’s easy for us to throw our anger in God’s face.
 
And God loves us anyway.
 
Ultimately, what Job desires above all else is a personal relationship with God.
 
And I suspect that’s true for most of us, too.
I know that I get frustrated sometimes with God. I pray to God and often, I am not sure that I get anything in return.
 
I desire a personal relationship with God, too. Sometimes I just want God to give me an answer.
 
But, in my life anyway, God doesn’t usually work that way.
 
God speaks, but I have to be paying attention. God doesn’t come in storm clouds or burning bushes.
 
God comes to me through other people. Through my community. Through nature. Through prayer.
 
And most often, God comes through silence. God sometimes has to hit me over the head when I’m least expecting it.
 
I wonder if God is like that for you, too?
 
As we leave here today, let us wonder together.
 
Let us enjoy the amazing way that God works in our lives as a faith community. Let us continue to desire a personal relationship with God, and may we come to that relationship through this community of faith.
 
May you deeply know God’s love, and may you allow God to work in your life in ways you least expect.
 
As we come to the communion table today, allow God’s grace and love to wash over you, and know that through communion, we receive the deeply personal connection with God that we desire.
 
And may we remember: in all things, love – always. Amen.
 
God of grace, we lift our eyes to you today in humble prayer. We know we are not always perfect, and we are grateful for stories like Job’s to remind us that even the prophets and the people in scripture struggle with their relationship with you, too. We desire a deeply personal relationship with you, and we ask that you help us to see You all around us. Be near to us, always, O God. In your loving name, we pray. Amen.

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